Mic Drop

From Scrubs to Spotlight (ft. April Hansen)

Episode Summary

In this episode of Mic Drop, April shares her journey from small-town beginnings to becoming a leader in hyper-growth environments and a sought-after speaker. She discusses the pivotal moments that shaped her career, how she navigated challenges, and her passion for helping others grow. April also introduces her Growth Game Plan, a framework for achieving success in the face of turbulence, and shares personal insights on balancing ambition with resilience.

Episode Notes

Guest Bio:

April is a dynamic leader known for her expertise in driving hyper-growth within organizations. With a background in healthcare and a track record of leading companies to unprecedented levels of success, April has become a prominent figure in the world of business and professional speaking. Her ability to translate personal and organizational challenges into actionable growth strategies has made her a respected voice in her field. April's passion for helping others achieve their potential is evident in her work, whether she's on stage or leading teams.

Core Topics:

From Small Beginnings to Big Dreams: April’s story is a testament to the power of curiosity and resilience. Her journey from a small-town upbringing to leading a billion-dollar company highlights the importance of thinking big and taking calculated risks. Listeners will gain insights into how embracing their ambitions, despite limited resources or initial failures, can lead to remarkable achievements.

Navigating Hyper-Growth: During her time at AYA, April played a crucial role in scaling the company to incredible heights. She emphasizes that real growth starts from within—both within the organization and within ourselves. April’s experiences will inspire listeners to focus on their internal decision-making processes and personal growth as they strive to overcome external challenges.

The Transition to Thought Leadership: For April, becoming a thought leader was about making sense of her experiences and sharing those lessons with others. By turning her professional journey into a mission to help others, she found a deeper sense of purpose. This segment encourages listeners to reflect on their own journeys and consider how they can use their experiences to impact others.

The Growth Game Plan: April’s signature framework provides a structured approach to achieving growth in turbulent times. She shares practical strategies for staying relevant and ensuring that audiences not only feel inspired but also leave with actionable tools. This discussion will resonate with anyone looking to refine their approach to personal and professional development.

Personal Resilience and Growth: April’s story is one of turning trauma into growth. She discusses how facing personal and professional challenges head-on led to greater self-awareness and resilience. This segment offers listeners a powerful reminder that the path to success often requires navigating through adversity and emerging stronger on the other side.

Resources:

Learn more about April Hansen:

Learn more about Josh Linkner:

ABOUT MIC DROP:

Hear from the world’s top thought leaders and experts, sharing tipping point moments, strategies, and approaches that led to their speaking career success. Throughout each episode, host Josh Linkner, #1 Innovation keynote speaker in the world, deconstructs guests’ Mic Drop moments and provides tactical tools and takeaways that can be applied to any speaking business, no matter its starting point. You'll enjoy hearing from some of the top keynote speakers in the industry including: Ryan Estis, Alison Levine, Peter Sheahan, Seth Mattison, Cassandra Worthy, and many more. Mic Drop is sponsored by ImpactEleven.

Learn more at: MicDropPodcast.com

ABOUT THE HOST:

Josh Linkner — a New York Times bestselling author — is a rare blend of business, art, and science.

On the business front, he’s been the founder and CEO of five tech companies, which created over 10,000 jobs and sold for a combined value of over $200 million. He’s the co-founder and Managing Partner of Muditā (moo-DEE-tah) Venture Partners - an early-stage venture capital firm investing in groundbreaking technologies. Over the last 30 years, he’s helped over 100 startups launch and scale, creating over $1 billion in investor returns. He’s twice been named the EY Entrepreneur of The Year and is the recipient of the United States Presidential Champion of Change Award.

While proud of his business success, his roots are in the dangerous world of jazz music. Josh has been playing guitar in smoky jazz clubs for 40 years, studied at the prestigious Berklee College of Music, and has performed over 1000 concerts around the world. His experiences in both business and music led him to become one of the world’s foremost experts on innovation. Josh

is the co-founder and Chairman of Platypus Labs, a global research, training, and consulting firm. Today, he’s on a mission to help leaders Find A Way™ through creative problem-solving, inventive thinking, and ingenuity.

Learn more about Josh: JoshLinkner.com

SPONSORED BY AMPLIFY PUBLISHING GROUP:

Partnering with CXOs, keynote speakers, change makers, and other visionary leaders, Amplify Publishing Group (APG) is a leader in the hybrid publishing space with more than twenty years of experience acquiring, producing, marketing, and distributing books. 

Passionate about ideas and voices that need to be heard, they're known for launching books that start engaging and timely conversations. At each turn, they have been at the forefront of innovation and have spearheaded a critical disruption of the publishing industry.

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In Detroit, history was made when Barry Gordy opened Motown Records back in 1960. More than just discovering great talent, Gordy built a systematic approach to launching superstars. His rigorous processes, technology, and development methods were the secret sauce behind legendary acts such as The Supremes, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Diana Ross and Michael Jackson.

As a nod to the past, Detroit Podcast Studios leverages modern versions of Motown’s processes to launch today’s most compelling podcasts. What Motown was to musical artists, Detroit Podcast Studios is to podcast artists today. With over 75 combined years of experience in content development, audio production, music scoring, storytelling, and digital marketing, Detroit Podcast Studios provides full-service development, training, and production capabilities to take podcasts from messy ideas to finely tuned hits. 

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Episode Transcription

April Hansen:

It's less about the strategic moves on the field, and it's all about focusing on the players themselves. It's about what we can do, me as an individual, and my role as a player in the game.

Josh Linkner:

Hey friends, Josh Linkner here. Delighted to bring you season three of Mic Drop, the number one podcast for professional speakers and thought leaders on the show. We connect with experts at the top of the field unpacking their success to help each of us grow and thrive from elevating your artistry to booking more gigs. Mic Drop is designed to give you the tools and insights you need to reach the next level. Together we'll accelerate the path to growth, success, and most importantly, impact

ImpactEleven Sponsor:

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Josh Linkner:

Today on Mic Drop. I welcome my friend April Hansen, a phenomenal growth leader and keynote speaker whose journey from nursing to healthcare staffing innovation. It's nothing short of inspirational from starting her own healthcare staffing company facing setbacks during the recession to spearheading a technology startup that revolutionized clinical placements. April's story is a masterclass in resilience and entrepreneurship. In our conversation, April shares the pivotal moments from her career and the lessons learned through navigating the complexities of a hypergrowth and disruptive startup. Her story is a powerful testament to the impact of internal strategies over external conditions, highlighting the importance of self-awareness and personal growth in achieving massive success. April, welcome to Mic Drop.

April Hansen:

Thanks, Josh. I'm so excited to be here.

Josh Linkner:

Me too. Um, I've enjoyed our conversation so much over the years, and, um, as people get to know you, uh, before your, your incredible success as sort of this hypergrowth leader and keynote speaker, give us a little bit of your backstory. I know everything changed sort of 2017 and beyond, but, but maybe give us a sense of what, what happened leading up to that point.

April Hansen:

Yeah, you know, I say that I am the biggest non-celebrity ever to walk the face of the planet. , I'm the most sort of normal person story. Um, I grew up in a super small town, grew up in a really, really low middle class family. And for me life was, was sort of small. Life was sort of normal and it was good, right? I didn't have any sort of massive adversity or anything in, in my younger years. But what I did have were really, really big dreams. And honestly, like no, no way to figure out how I was going to make them happen, um, except my curiosity and maybe my ability to think big and wanna take some risks. And so, you know, when I had absolutely no clue what I was doing, very, very early on in my career, I decided to start a company.

I was a nurse and had fought my way through the ranks to go to nursing school and put myself through nursing school and get there. And I kind of looked around the world around me and thought, wow, this healthcare staffing thing would be kind of fun to get into. And if all these big people can have these companies, how come I can't? So I tried, right? And I started this little company and it went so great for a few years, and then it got crushed in the recession. And so I had sort of like blow number one of trying to be an entrepreneur and it didn't work. And I started to think, okay, you know, it was just the economy. It was, you blame it on that, right? So I, I decided, well, why don't I try to learn more about the healthcare staffing industry by going inside of it?

So I took a job with one of the big huge publicly traded healthcare staffing companies, and I was now on the inside and I was learning the ins and outs of the industry. And while I was working there, I kind of came back to my original conclusion, like, if these guys can do it, how come I can't do it? Like, there's gotta be something here for me. But by this time, I was already sort of on the corporate side. Um, but that entrepreneurial spirit was still alive and well. And at the same time I was being a nursing instructor, so I was teaching nursing clinicals as a part-time gig. I loved it, just wanted to stay connected. And I saw, again, flaws everywhere. Like, this is a terrible job. There's so much to manage, it's awful. I could help fix this. So I did something different that time I decided to get together a a little group of people.

There were four of us total, and we founded a company. We started a technology startup that would help enable a better clinical placement matching and facilitation process for nursing instructors like myself. And this time I was still working inside the healthcare staffing industry, still doing the corporate America gig, but I actually had a success as an entrepreneur. We were able to grow that company between 2012 and 2016. We exited it. So then sat being like, okay, maybe I'm not as bad at this as I thought, but who knows, right? But I still wasn't ready to completely jump out of corporate America at that time, but in 2017, I made a leap. And that's when you referenced things kind of took off in a different direction. I left the corporate job I was at, had exited the startup, and I started with something new, which was an up and coming disruptor in the healthcare staffing space. Had a super cool vision of how the world could be different. A vision I had shared for more than a decade since I had had my little fumbling broken startup healthcare staffing company. And the story from 2017 on is, is pretty remarkable. So that's, that's kind of how, in along a roundabout way, how I landed to where I'm at today in this, uh, healthcare staffing corporate America world.

Josh Linkner:

Well, and, and you know, you're, you're very modest. So at ia, you helped lead this incredible growth from a couple hundred million dollars in revenue in 2017, as I understand it, to about $11 billion today. Um, I don't know somebody who's experienced that kind of growth. I mean, most, most mortals have not . What, what are some of the key lessons that you learned as a leader during this remarkable growth and maybe even lessons that we as, as thought leaders and speakers could embrace in our own practices?

April Hansen:

Yeah, you know, it's, it's been a wild ride. And, and I say ride on purpose. There were days in the climb that felt like I was strapped in to like the king ka rollercoaster or something, and I'm, you know, ascending so fast. But yet feeling like every bump, every crossbar on that rollercoaster on the way up. And then as fast as that thing goes up, all of a sudden you're coming back down and then you're loop de loop and you're all over. And, and I say ride very intentionally because that's how it's felt. Um, you know, I would say some of the key lessons are that as much as we can obsess about our external strategy, as much as we can think as an organization and as a company, as an entrepreneur, as a business owner, about the strategy of what's happening around us, our competitors positioning the landscape, the climate, right, the healthcare.

If, if we think about sort of the healthcare staffing industry through a pandemic and the speaking industry through a pandemic, think of the vast dichotomy between those two. But the, the kind of the similarity was both industries and everyone within those industries had to completely pivot and reframe and do, do something different with their business. So the climate factors we think about in strategy that has a ton of bearing. But what I've learned most importantly through the lessons in hypergrowth are that regardless of what's happening in the landscape and the competitors, regardless, regardless of what's happening in your market and your economy, really your points of control, your lockup and how you can take advantage and really stimulate and foster growth is through what you do internally in your business and internally within yourself. And so thinking differently a lot about your, your own points of control, your own personal and team competitive advantage, and then the decisions that your leaders make and the decisions that you collectively make. And I think that that kind of comes together and culminates as why you're making the moves that you're making and why you're making them now. And so that sort of brings in that timing factor. So when I look back at some of those lessons, so many of them are much more internal to the organization and internal to us as humans, than it had anything to do with our market conditions or competitive strategic moves on the outside.

Josh Linkner:

Well, being a, making internal decisions and growth. You, you, at ia you helped, um, grow this kinda like a weed in a fertilizer bath inside of a greenhouse, but now you're taking this message of growth, uh, to others as a thought leader, so that, that's a transition for you. We, even though you're still obviously a, a very senior executive at the company, you're doing both, uh, you have a family, you have a, you know, burgeoning career as a, a senior executive at this incredible company. What, what's called you to, to enter the world of thought leadership and share your message of growth with others.

April Hansen:

You know, I love that you asked this question because I think sometimes people can look from the outside and they can say, well, how can you do all of that? Why do you want to Why that seems like a lot, right? Everybody has the same 24 hours in a day. Honestly, for me, the leaning into the thought leadership component of my career has honestly helped me make meaning of the experiences. And by me being able to work through making meaning of, of what I've experienced good and bad, and being able to share that with others, it, it actually helps me sort of actualize through the growth of that experience. There's, there was a saying that we used to say often, maybe too often during the pandemic was never waste a good crisis. Mm-Hmm. . And so when the next thing would come on, we would say, you know what?

We're never gonna waste this good crisis. And I say that sort of tongue in cheek now, but if I look back at the lessons learned in the period of hypergrowth, but also with my centricity in healthcare and really my heart for humans as a nurse, I almost feel like it would be an injustice and a disservice to not take that message and not frame it together. That it, it can help other people see the probability in something that they only believed was once possible and helping that to become much more probable. So for me, the thought leadership angle is actually, it's really a personal mission to make meaning out of the experiences that I've lived through.

Josh Linkner:

Love that you said that you, uh, my, I'll quote my, my life has been a wild ride where bravely bravery doesn't guarantee victory, but a game plan helps. And so as you enter this world of thought leadership with this important message on your heart, and, and its desire to not only find meaning and purpose for yourself, but help imbue it in others, what has that game plan been? How have you brought that thinking to this sort of next chapter, uh, for you professionally?

April Hansen:

I, I love how you asked this, and it is one of those things where people always used to say like, hope is not a plan. And I would say, well, yeah, but can actually be a strategy, but what is the plan? Mm-Hmm. . And so I would step back from that and I'd ask myself, what is the plan? And something that I've always been really good at is being super resourceful, super scrappy, when the plan looked like it was gonna fall apart and there was no plan, I could see the plan and I could execute on the plan. And so for me, what, what I believe the growth game plan really kind of brings is it's the way to, to extract the moves that, you know, you need to make, but put it into practical action that humans can take and humans can do, because a lot of people have vision, they have an idea of how they want to see the world and what the world could be, but what they don't know how to do is even how to put one foot in front of the other to move towards that.

And so when I talk about the game plan, it's less about the strategic moves on sort of the field, and it's all of, it's all about focusing on the players themselves, and each one of us inside our own growth personally, our growth in our speaking practices, our growth in our companies. If you're in corporate America like I am, it's about what we can do, me as an individual and my role as a player in the game. And so I really distill growth down into actionable pieces of what humans can do, not, not in, you know, the big corporate strategy and all the brilliant moves and traveling. The routes last taken, not so much that I love talking about that too, don't get me wrong. However, the growth game plan is centered on the humans that are inside the game itself.

Josh Linkner:

And I know that's your, your sort of signature keynote, the growth game plan. I love the terminology and it kind, it offers this framework for growth in the context of turbulence. Um, our industry, the speaking industry is in the midst of a lot of flux. Uh, the way people are buying and selling speeches is changing the topical areas, is changing. The role of a thought leader is changing, even the delivery mechanisms are changing. Are there any insights you that you can apply from your keynote, from your body of work around a growth game plan, uh, in a real tangible way that, that we, we speakers and thought leaders should be thinking about our practices as we continue to drive growth in the context of turbulence?

April Hansen:

Yeah, I think one of the things, um, comes around just, just sheer relevance. And people love to be inspired, but they also like to be informed. They wanna walk in with curiosity and understand what you're gonna talk about. But on the other side, they wanna walk out smarter. And so I think bringing elements of relevance into everything that we do when we're talking with audiences, they don't just want to be inspired. They wanna actually say, I can now do X because I just spent 60 minutes in that room. So for me, what's very, been very actionable in the growth game plan is doing real audience simulations. I did, um, a, an event a couple of weeks ago. We had a really, really cool exercise, sort of broke up the, went to a table base exercise. We did a role play with structured roles. People had to experience themselves in each of these roles.

It's highly memorable because we're hitting on emotion. And so once we hit emotion, we trigger dopamine. People now remember, it's amazing. So when I sort of think about breaking down our, our speaking practice and breaking down our keynotes, we have to be number one, super relevant. They, we can't just walk in and make people feel good. They have got to feel like they have a new tool by the time they're leaving there that they can bring into their practice. We have to give them something that they can, um, how would I say it? Something that is really, really tangible that they can walk away with. So I've really leaned in heavily into leave behinds assessments, um, mm-hmm. kind of making something that doesn't just stay in those 60 minutes, something that walks away with them. And all of these things are helping to bend the curve on decision speed, helping them be able to, the very next time they're in a meeting have a new word, the very next time they're in conflict, which is something big I talk about in the growth game plan. They literally have a new phrase and a new word to approach that situation that they're in, which is gonna cut down the decision cycle. It's gonna give 'em the faster path to action. It's gonna help them advance on their strategy. So I sort of think right now the world needs us to show up in really practical ways, really relevant ways as keynote speakers to help the audience have a tangible transformation by the time they walk out of that 60 minutes or whatever timeframe we have with them.

Josh Linkner:

So, so good. Couldn't, couldn't agree more. Um, and I know you're into, into tools, uh, as, as am I, and I, I was reading, you know, you have this growth readiness scorecard and, and as I understand there's sort of these 12 growth attributes. Uh, you don't have to go through all 12, but would you mind sharing a couple of them and just, again, trying to think about what we as thought leaders might be able to borrow from those attributes or how we can sort of self-assess or, or even bolster some of the, those attributes in order to drive growth?

April Hansen:

For sure. So I think the breakdown of the growth readiness scorecard, and, and please head to my website, check it out, download it. Um, the, the, the components that I think are key is that you're looking internally, externally and sort of organizationally. So you're looking outside the company, you're looking inside the company, you're looking inside yourself and where you're at. And, and why I think this is so important is how you think about your company and your company's competitive nature will be vastly different than someone sitting next to you. You could share an office wall and how they perceive the company, how they perceive the organizational readiness for growth, how they perceive their own readiness for growth could be so different. So it's really fun to do this, especially with executive teams. And all of a sudden they're comparing notes and they're like, wait a minute, I thought that we were superstar ready for growth and somebody else is going, no way.

I think our culture's in the toilet. And you don't even know that if you're not comparing. And so what I love and what I like to hone in on is how are you perceiving the readiness for growth? And that's really kind of that first part of the assessment. How do you think about your company? And then how do you yourself think of yourself as as, as a player in this sort of overall growth? And when, when we get those perceptions out, we're then able to horizontally look across and identify any common themes. And I'll tell you this, there's, there's one stat that I highlight in the growth game plan that says 84% of all barriers to growth are internal. And the bigger the company gets, that number goes north of 95%. So a lot of times people perceive their lack of the, or their lack of growth or inability to grow because a, a competitor's bigger or batter than them, or they have a bigger marketing budget and they have a, a better X, y, z person in this role. But what they don't realize is that the barriers to growth are probably much more held on the inside. And the readiness assessment helps them to unlock those perceptions and then compare that across their groups and across their leaders.

Josh Linkner:

So, good. I mean, obviously you're talking about organizational growth and looking inward, but I think the lesson applies even if you're a solopreneur, you're a keynote speaker, you know, that looking inward concept, and we all, it's easy for us to say the blame is outside of us. It's a market condition. It's this bureau, it's this client, when really the, the transformation needs to happen internally. Um, you know, not, not to get too personal, but you, you've talked a lot about, you know, kind of looking inward, that personal growth. Um, how, how have you applied? Like, I'm curious how you've approached your own personal growth and development over these years of not only rapid growth, but you know, changes in family and all that. Um, are there certain practices that you've done? How are you thinking about your own continued internal personal growth and development?

April Hansen:

Yeah, there's, there's a, a thing called, and, and some people are, are much more familiar with this thing's sister, but there's a thing called post-traumatic growth. Have you ever heard of post-traumatic growth? I have, actually. Yeah. Or been familiar with it. Mm-Hmm. . Yeah. So for me, it was realizing the difference between really PTSD post-traumatic stress disorder and post-traumatic growth. And, and that sounds kind of heavy, like, whoa, just dove dove right into that. But what is that? And for me, what I realized was after I went through some really, really challenging times in my life, right around 2010 or so, um, my dad had a massive crisis with mental illness that, that just sort of took our whole family, uh, to a different place. Mm-Hmm. Um, the dynamics of our family. And it was very frustrating being inside healthcare, but at the same time being so helpless and navigating that was awful.

And it was very, very traumatic. I essentially mourned the loss of my father, but yet he wasn't dead. And that was a very traumatic experience. And then just a couple short years after that, I, you know, we witnessed bore witness, uh, to my parents', very traumatic divorce, like Jerry Springer style. And at the same exact time my own marriage was falling apart, and I was now found myself a single mom, a load of debt from the failed startup that I told you about. And it was tough. And I think right there it was, it was one of those realizations for me that as I came out of that, as I started to again put that one foot in front of the other and make some changes, I was experiencing growth in new ways. I finally was forced to deal with some of the impacts of the trauma of my childhood, and to become more self-aware.

And with that, I realized I'm more resilient than maybe I thought I was. I'm not this failure of a human because my company failed, or my marriage failed, and all of these things are failing. I actually became more resilient and much more self-aware. And as I developed those properties within myself, all of a sudden the world started to become more aware of my capabilities and of, and of my dreams and of my aspirations. And then all of a sudden I had a successful startup exit. And these things sort of built upon themselves. So when I really lean into the, the difference here for me, each of these sort of traumatic things that have happened for me have been able to, to channel into greater self-awareness, greater resilience, and then ultimately growth, which is what we're all striving for. No one wants to revert back to just that place of, of safety to stay alive.

We're all striving for growth. But most recently that that came to, to light again, post pandemic. Mm-Hmm, . So in the pandemic, working in healthcare, deploying the largest deployment of, of healthcare professionals that our nation had ever really called upon hundreds of thousands of healthcare professionals. And in, in my work in healthcare staffing enough was never enough. It was like, we need a thousand nurses and we get 'em a thousand. They're like, that's cute. We need 4,000 more. Right? And, and it was really tough and massive growth. And at the same exact time, fielding the lives of our clinicians who some of them didn't make it. And understanding and putting the conditions that we're putting them in. And when I, I sort of got to the other side of it, I realized, wow, I just lived through three years. Yes, it was growth, but it was actually a lot of trauma at the same time.

And how am I gonna package that for myself and then of course, make meaning of it out to audiences? And that's the place where I'm at currently. The Body of work, the growth game plan really is a culmination of the next phase of growth post this last really crazy, cool hypergrowth experience, but also very traumatic and scary event of, of going through. And that personal growth at every single phase has been the fuel, the power, and honestly the conviction to want to lean in, to lean in further into the work that I do, further into the business and further into the speaking industry so that I can create impact.

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Josh Linkner:

First of all, thank you for sharing. You know, it's such, it is a beautiful reflection. Um, I love the term PO post-traumatic growth. I had heard it before, but I appreciate you unpacking it for us 'cause I think we all understand it much better and appreciate, you know, you sharing honestly what, what some of those challenges were back in 2010 and such. If you could take your current 2024 Badass April and and teleport her back to that 2010 April with the knowledge in insight that you have now, what, what would you tell that 2010 April, knowing what you know now and what you've been through over these last 14 years?

April Hansen:

You know, I have this little pillow sitting on the chair behind me, uh, right here in my office that my sister sent to me. And I just love my sister. We're super close, both my sisters, and it says, be the girl who just went for it. Mm. That's what the pillow says. And if I could teleport myself back to 2010, which I think I would look a lot younger, a little less pandemic, you know, laden all of those things. But I think I would tell myself that be the girl that just went for it, I was afraid in 2010 I was climbing out of the failed, uh, healthcare staffing company that I tried to start. I had this great vision, but I was climbing out of that failure. I was dealing with the dynamics of my family falling apart in the marriage and all the things that I talked about.

I was so afraid because I was afraid that I was actually the problem and that I was not going to ever really achieve the goals and the dreams that I had set for myself because I just wasn't made of the material to do that. I didn't have the fiber to do it. And it, and it took years of, of work and growth to get to the point where I became the girl that just went for it. And now I think I look at things and I just go for it. But, uh, a version 14 plus years ago could have used that advice.

Josh Linkner:

Well, it's amazing because you've not only had pro post-traumatic growth, you've, you've gained post-traumatic confidence because as you, as you navigate those challenges and come out strong on the other side, you, you're building this body of work and a point of reference that you, you have what takes, you have the right fiber to to, to hustle through just about anything that comes at you. One of the things I love about you, and we've joked about this before, is your level of intensity. I feel like I, I've never really met someone as intense as me until I met you. I feel like we should be brother and sister, like if they're last name, we'll change both of our last names up. Instead of Josh Linkner, I'll be like, Josh Intensity, it'll be April Intensity will be from the Intensity family as my sister. Um, and so I'm curious though, like intensity can be very productive. You know, you out there, you're achievement oriented, you accomplish things. Um, I'm curious if it's ever had a negative impact on you. Is there a downside of that level of intensity? What are those kind of pros and cons of in your mind of extreme intensity?

April Hansen:

That's, that's a great question. Of course, the intense person's gonna be like nothing. It's perfect. , we should all be this intense . I think there are casualties of intensity. I think my, uh, my husband would tell you that he can't keep up, right. And that I think it can have casualties in relationships, if not carefully managed. Um, because not everybody in the world around us is, is, is is as intense. And so I think there's part in finding community of people like you that, that share this intensity. The impact 11 community. I feel so loved and so normal in this community because so much of us have such high ambition and, and levels of capacity. But I do think that also on the flip side of that, having a community of people that are not as intense helps to sort of center back on the time being present in the moment. Not just always seeking or thinking about that next thing on the to-do list, the next goal, the next ambition. So I've been very intentional with centering myself, sort of, if I'm in the center, I have a community and a and a, a whole loving following family. Everything that's hyper intense. And I also have the exact opposite of one that is not, and I don't judge that community. I embrace that community because it helps keep me sort of centered and well integrated in the middle of it.

Josh Linkner:

Yeah, that's a really good sentiment for those listening. April and I went to dinner recently and we were joking, like, you know, we had a couple hour dinner. We, we, we launched six companies, we invented a new language, you know, and, and, and, but, but the reason I bring all that up is as playful as I'm being is that, you know, you don't have to do that to be a successful person or a successful speaker. Um, and, and there isn't, there is a downside in that, because you're right, April, you, we can lose our sense of groundedness and presence. And so I think it's really more about showing up in your authentic way, like who you really are. Not trying to like, I don't wanna try to be April or try to be somebody else. It's like being me and, and you're doing the same, which is is such such a beautiful thing.

Um, to, to honor now that you are, um, you know, you, you balance a lot of things. I mean, you, you are a, a wonderful mom and, and, and, and you have a cool husband who I've met. You have this incredible corporate career, speaking career is blowing up. Any advice or thoughts on, on balancing, I, I mean it's sort of a, a difficult question 'cause you're juggling a lot of things. You're spinning a lot of plates, but how do you think about sort of balancing these different obligations and, and remaining deeply present and active in each of those different, um, dimensions?

April Hansen:

I have two thoughts on this. One thought is you're capable of more than you give yourself credit for. So I think a lot of people come out of the gate thinking that they have to guard against the villains of everything else in their life that's gonna come in and steal their time and steal their capacity and steal everything. That can be true. But if you come in so gated and so guarded, you're going to artificially limit your own capacity. So if you're in the place where you wanna grow, then let down the guard a little bit. And you don't always have to say no or be so guarding you actually can make it work in most all cases. And when you get an opportunity, if you're, if you're just getting, starting in the speak in the speaking community and you get an opportunity for a rep, say yes and figure it out, get on the stage, put down the guard, you know, you'll figure out how to balance it into the time and just say yes.

Um, you know, sort of the, the other side of that is get help , I had to be told actually by one of my employees back in 2020 that I needed an executive assistant and that she was going to be that thing, that person, that role for me until I found one. And I was like, I don't even know how I'd use an executive assistant. Like, I don't think I need that. I'm so high capacity, I'm organized, I'm this right and this, I love her. Kelsey, if you're listening, it's you, I'm talking about, she came to me and she said, I think that you need the EA and I'm actually gonna do the role. So she doubled herself in her jobs. She did that for me. And I, all of a sudden I was like, wow, having help, it meant so much. But I go back to my earliest stages in life.

I've been independent, basically fending for myself since I was around 14. I didn't even think about asking for help. And in today's world, the power of what you can do with a VA and the community and just getting that help to help keep yourself organized, you're gonna unlock even more capacity. And ps it also feels good, especially if you're a solopreneur and you're in your own business having a little bit of help that, that is probably more affordable and more attainable than you think. You also have a partner, you have somebody that you can just sort of talk to vent to lean on it. It is so much, uh, more capacity building than than what you'd think. I will never again go into a venture God willing, where I do not have some sort of, of, of help with me. And it's so key.

Josh Linkner:

Well, I'm so glad you brought that up. And, and help can look a lot of different ways. It can look in the way form of, of an ea you know, helping to manage some of the more, more mundane tasks to free up capacity. It can also come in the form of a mentor. It could come in the form of an agency. It could come in the form of a, a great attorney. You know, like, like we can on a 360 basis, not only doing the, the, the more mundane tasks, but, but we can get help in lots of dimensions and it doesn't always have to be a full-time employee. It could be help from a friend, it could be help from a colleague, help from help from a partner. So I think that's really, really sound advice. April, so you've, you've, you've grown this amazing company. You're, your speaking business has taken off. Your family's healthy, thank God and strong. What does the next couple years look like for you as you look into the crystal ball? What's next for April?

April Hansen:

I am just absolutely in love with the speaking industry and with building my speaking practice. I am garnering so much personal joy, seeing the impact, the, the LinkedIn messages that come. I received a message last week, an email through my website from someone who follows me on LinkedIn, who's actually in the healthcare staffing industry in the Philippines. And she's part of a, a small five woman company. Um, and she said, we're just a group of five women in the Philippines trying to make it in healthcare staffing. And we just wanted, I just needed to tell you that you are someone we look up to. We are following your post, we're following the email came in at like 11 o'clock at night when I was in my third city in three days. And I just stopped right in my tracks. And I'm like, this practice matters and this is the impact that I'm making.

Of course I'm screenshotting it and sending it to all of those mentors and the help, like you've talked about that I brought into my life, Josh, um, I sent it to Connor. Uh, I've sent it to everybody. And that to me is, is so huge. So the, I would say the next sort of immediate phase is I'm gonna keep building this speaking practice and I hope to reach as many lives as possible who need to hear my message right now, who are maybe trying to figure out what growth means for them. How do they even get started? What is this thing? Maybe they like me, are sort of in this recovery phase and, and they're, they're searching to build meaning out of post-traumatic growth. That's where I really, really am gonna spend a bunch of time, um, very excited about getting more into the venture community.

That's been a fun, uh, really fun, exciting piece for me as well and learning. Um, and I am in the middle of authoring my first book with my sister. So we're gratefully working with Amplify and the amazing team at Amplify. Um, have had some excellent writing coaches, of course we brought in help to help us get there. And that's really, really fun. And again, I hope that continues to build the thought leadership piece. So for me, diversity in, in what I'm doing, kind of that portfolio career is the ultimate goal and leaning so far and so hard into the speaking practice right now is just where I'm achieving so much joy.

Josh Linkner:

Love it. And of course, the cool thing is that for each time you get an email like that, which is a beautiful thing, you know, there, you touched, you know, a hundred other people that didn't write you an email. And so knowing that you're making an impact on the world, you're right there, there's very few things as, as intrinsically rewarding as as as touching another person and helping them, um, tackle whatever's on, on their heart or mind. Uh, and so April, thank you for doing that for us. I mean, today's conversation was wonderful. Uh, I think you're, you're an incredible, uh, source of, of insight and, and energy. I appreciate your vulnerable, um, shares where you were and and, and the incredible success that you've had. So we're grateful for you in helping us all grow faster and better. Thanks again for joining me on Mic Drop.

April Hansen:

Thanks much for having me, Josh.

Josh Linkner:

As we end today's conversation with April, we're reminded of the profound effects that introspection and internal decision making have on personal and professional growth. April's path from a small town nurse to a leading figure in healthcare staffing, and now a thought leader exemplifies how resilience, strategic thinking, and a commitment to growth can lead to insane outcomes. April, thanks so much for joining us on Mic Drop and thanks for your continued leadership in our industry, your insights and experiences. Encourage us all to look inward and really think about what's possible. Thanks so much for joining me on another episode of Mic Drop. Don't forget to subscribe on Apple, Spotify, Google podcasts, or wherever you get your favorite shows. If you love the show, please share it with your friends and don't forget to give us a five star review. For show transcripts and show notes, visit mic drop podcast.com. I'm your host, Josh Linkner. Thanks so much for listening. And here's to your next Mike Drop moment.