The Upscale Episode 05: Balance and resilience in entrepreneurship with Kayla Lebovits
As a high achiever, ever feel like you could just use a break? In this episode, we’re chatting with Kayla Lebovits, Founder and CEO of Bundle Benefits, about resilience, work-life balance, and prioritizing wellness as a leader in business. Kayla is also sharing insights from her entrepreneurial journey like growing a team and guiding a business with core values.
Tune-in to this episode to hear:
The importance of prioritizing wellness in business and the benefits of taking a break instead of hustling, overworking, or burning out
Insights on how to lead through change and seize new opportunities
How core values and listening to the customer can guide a business through growth
Inside the episode:
00:20
Hi friends it’s Anastasia here and welcome back to the Breakthrough Mindset podcast. In today’s episode I’m chatting with Kayla Lebovits the founder and CEO of Bundle Benefits, a personalized work benefit work-life benefit that gives employees access to a platform of interactive sessions for themselves, their families, and their work teams to improve overall wellbeing, productivity, and engagement. We’re talking about the entrepreneur’s start up journey, working parenthood, and the importance of resilience for leaders in business. That said, let’s get right into this episode.
00:58
Anastasia: Hi Kayla, thanks so much for being here. Let’s start with intros. For everyone listening, can you tell us about Bundle Benefits and what you do?
01:23
Kayla: So bundle benefits is a personalized work life benefit for the modern employee, we first started out, really supporting working parents across the world. And I've grown now to really support all employees. But obviously, working parents with a pandemic, we're really struggling to manage a lot of different roles. Teacher, partner, parent, cook chef cleaner, everything. So there's obviously been a very big focus on supporting them in the last year, but we've expanded since then. And we're really focused on supporting every employee, whether you have kids don't have kids, have elderly parents married, single, whatever it is, we basically do this through providing personalized live and virtual experiences on variety of topics. So they're one on one or small group sessions. And the idea is that everyone needs a break. And so our platform is called bundle breaks. And we basically are focused on really allowing people to take a mental breather, refocus on work, or just have a coffee, take a shower, whatever it is they need to do while their kids are engaged in our sessions, while they're engaged in our sessions or, or their elderly parents are engaged in their sessions, we're really trying to support every employee because everyone has stress in their lives. They're balancing a lot. And so our sessions are all about really allowing everyone to just recharge, and take care of themselves.
02:53
Anastasia: I can definitely relate to needing a break every once in a while, as a mom of 2 and a business owner. I love the concept of a bundle break, and you’re right it really is for everyone. I can relate to the role of overstretched parent at times. Working moms really are wearing all the hats, especially in the remote everything environment that the pandemic created. It's definitely one of the things that I talk about as a success coach - taking a break when you need it, and not always pushing through. Because if you're being really honest with yourself, you're not always doing your best work. And you're not showing up fully present at home or at work if you're on the brink of burnout. And so having self-awareness and having your own resilience practice and knowing when to take a break is just so important.
11:55
Anastasia: Absolutely, having that growth mindset is also so essential. Learning and growing everyday. So just thinking that, you know, someone who's listening right now might be starting up their first business. Or they might be thinking of leaving their nine to five to pursue an idea. So can you share in the earliest starting stage of Bundle Benefits, what was one of the most important skills that you leaned into or something you learned along the way?
12:29
Kayla: Yeah. So I think what I learned and I, in the beginning, when you're thinking of starting your own business, you talked to a lot of different people, because you're trying to get advice. You're trying to get perspective, you talk to people that have done it, and you're, you're listening a lot. And I think it's really important to listen, and get all those different perspectives so that when you take that leap, you are fully in it. At the same time, I also think there are a lot of people who are going to be haters and tell you you're crazy. Your idea is terrible. Why would you leave the comfort of your job? It's so much risk, what are you doing, you're setting yourself back in your career. And I think you need to learn how to listen to that, but also block it out at the same time. And it's okay to It's okay, you need those haters in your life in order to push you forward every day. But I think it's important to listen important to, you know, block some some of the negativity out. At the same time. I think another skill is knowing that you can work on your business every day all day, and you still won't feel like you're getting to where you need to be because there's just so much to do. And I think early on, I just realized that setting priorities every day of what to accomplish is the best way to go about x and you feel like you're slowly chipping away.
15:37
Anastasia: Yeah, I think what you're touching on too is that entrepreneurial mindset of not being afraid to fail. You know, there are wins and there are lessons and you have to just put one foot in front of the other and just keep going. It’s really.. if you have a big goal, if you have a big aspiration, the only way to get there is to just to take action, even if it's imperfect action and messy action. You know, and, not letting those things in your head of, “Am I going to be any good at this? Is it going to work out the way I expect it to?” Don’t let those thoughts stop you from even starting. This is why as a coach I share that resiliency is so essential. You really need to work on your mindset first, because you can have, you know, the best laid plans, you could have all the strategies laid out for you to really accelerate your company. But if you're not guiding it from the front with a mindset that empowers you to, you know, pivot when challenges do come up, or, trusting and your instincts and the decisions that you are making, show up on those days where you’re not necessarily feeling motivated - you're just not going to take action. So it's really that mindset work that that needs to be done first.
17:02
Kayla: Yeah, I agree with that. I think also that a lot of times people get caught up in strategizing and planning. And at some point, you just got to go, and you got to just try it. So well, we have a mentality our company, like fake it till you make it just keep trying it. If you want to put out something pilot, don't spend months planning it, you're only going to really learn once you test it and act. So we have a very large focus on acting. Because I think it's what if you strategize too much, and you plan too much, you get caught up in your head too much. You know, you can plan all you want, but until you actually execute, you're not really gonna see. See the interesting findings that can come from pilots and test. So they're in the beginning of when I started my business, we did a lot of testing and piloting. We're still doing testing and piloting. Now, we're always doing that. Because again, that's how you learn and build up that resilience and push forward. So I think I completely agree with you that you sometimes just need to go for it. And you'll learn as you go, and you'll mess up as you go. But that's part of the process. And it's also part of what makes it fun and exciting on a daily basis.
29:23
Anastasia: So, you also mentioned values. I always love when I hear that coming up. So, I wanted to ask, how important has that been to you to have values, personally as an entrepreneur and then also the values that you bring into your business and kind of growing it from the inside out with that value set?
29:53
Kayla: Yeah, so we have a few values that are personal values that I you know, continually work on infusing into the company. One of them is just integrity, there should be integrity in everything you do. My, my father always says like integrity is the coin of the realm. And I completely agree with that. So in everything we do, like the highest level of ethics and morals, and every single decision we make, so that's just something that is really important to me personally, and also to our company.
About our guest, Kayla Lebovits:
Kayla Lebovits grew Bundle from her MBA work at Harvard Business School, where she sought to revolutionize the employer-funded benefits model. She founded Bundle after working for four years in sales in the financial industry and in venture capital. It’s there where she witnessed her colleagues struggling to excel at work while managing their personal responsibilities of caring for family members and their overall well-being. She felt that employers had a huge opportunity to support these employees in unique and impactful ways no matter where or how they worked. She also holds a B.A. in Diplomatic History with a Minor in Education from the University of Pennsylvania.
The Bundle Benefit is a personalized work-life benefit that provides experiences to employees, their families, and their work teams through Bundle Breaks, interactive, live, virtually facilitated one-on-one and small group sessions on a variety of topics. Each Break is thoughtfully designed to give employees meaningful time to take a break, connect with others, focus on work, or just enjoy a mental breather.