Focus on ROI: Return on Inspiration

"People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel." – Maya Angelou

For many years, I lived in the world of numbers. Most days, you could find me with my head buried deep in financial reports, building spreadsheets, running models, and calculating projections. Return on Investment (ROI) was the language I spoke fluently, a metric that told us whether an initiative was "worth it" based on the cold math of inputs and outputs. I ran so many calculations that they sometimes haunted my dreams, or more accurately, my nightmares.

While ROI remains an important tool, I have come to realize that the most critical returns in life and leadership aren’t purely financial; they are emotional, energetic, and inspirational. And they are much harder to quantify.

The New ROI: Return on Inspiration

Today, I help leaders focus on a different kind of ROI that doesn't show up neatly on a balance sheet but shows up in every corner of their business and lives. Return on Inspiration measures the energy you create by how you lead. It asks:

• Are you igniting possibility, or just managing tasks?

• Are you creating believers, or just extracting compliance?

• Are you building something sustainable, or simply enforcing short-term performance?

When you lead with inspiration, everything changes: You unite people around a cause bigger than themselves. You unlock creativity and innovation that command-and-control leadership could never dream of accessing. You reduce turnover not because people are trapped, but because they're committed. You create a culture that doesn’t resist change; it thrives on learning and adaptation. You build teams that aren’t just efficient, but alive with purpose.

And yes, if you're still thinking like a CFO, the financial returns eventually follow, too. Inspired companies consistently outperform disengaged ones. However, the deeper return is in realizing human potential. It's in knowing you didn’t just move numbers - you moved people.

We are living through an era of extraordinary fatigue. Burnout is rising, trust is fragile, and talent is mobile. The old playbook built on pressure, micromanagement, and “do more with less" doesn’t just fail now; it completely backfires. Inspiration is no longer a "nice to have," it’s a business imperative. The organizations, movements, and leaders that will thrive in the next decade understand that energy is the new currency, meaning is the new metric, and inspiration is the new ROI.

If you are still trying to motivate people with spreadsheets and targets alone, you’re playing yesterday’s game. If you want to create the kind of impact and legacy people remember, it starts with what you inspire. Because when you lead with inspiration, you don’t have to push people uphill. They run toward the vision because it feels like theirs, too. And that’s a return no spreadsheet can calculate. Are you ready to lead that way? Let’s talk about how we can unleash your Return on Inspiration.