We recently connected with Lisa and have shared our conversation below.

Lisa, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

I didn’t sit down one day and decide to start a business. That’s not how this happened.
Greater Grounds was born out of a season of my life falling apart — and out of an honest question I couldn’t keep avoiding: Is this really all there is?

I’d spent decades in corporate America working my way up through Human Resources — training and development, organizational leadership, Director-level roles across sectors from government contracting to tech to retail. I was good at it. I understood people. I understood systems. But somewhere along the way, I had stopped living my own truest self. I was helping organizations and people develop, while quietly becoming more disconnected from who I actually was.

Then 2011 came. A divorce. A chronic auto-immune disorder I’d been battling for years. And shortly after I finally felt like I was getting my footing back, I was hit by a car while jogging in my own neighborhood. My lower left leg was crushed.

That season cracked me open.

And here’s what I found inside the crack: I had been living a version of life that looked fine from the outside but felt deeply misaligned on the inside. I had been performing — in my faith, in my relationships, in my work. I had been talking about the things that mattered most to me more than I was actually living them. And I knew I wasn’t alone in that.

I started noticing it everywhere. People who were capable, thoughtful, even deeply faithful — and still stuck. Conversations that stayed on the surface because going deeper felt too risky, too exposing, too slow. Communities that looked connected but weren’t actually honest with each other. A kind of spiritual formation that produced good information but not real transformation.

That tension — between the life people were living and the life they sensed was possible — wouldn’t leave me alone. And eventually I stopped trying to make it quiet.

In 2012, I launched Greater Grounds.

At the beginning, If I’m honest, we didn’t have it all figured out. There were four of us who started it together, and over time three moved on for different reasons — divorce, different directions, the honest difficulty of the entrepreneurial ride. We learned the hard way that you have to be ruthlessly clear about who you are, what you do, why you’re doing it, how you’ll do it, and who you serve. We didn’t have those answers yet. We just knew we wanted to help people navigate change in a way that was actually transformational — not just tolerable.
What made me believe this was worth doing? A few things.

First, I’d been coaching people in some form since I was a swimming coach in college at UT. I’d watched what happened when someone was truly seen, truly heard, truly asked the right question at the right moment. Something shifted in them. Not just mentally — but in how they actually lived. And I knew that kind of transformation didn’t happen by accident. It needed intention. It needed space. It needed a process.

Second, I kept seeing a gap no one was filling the way I believed it needed to be filled. There was plenty of life coaching focused on goals and performance. There were churches offering spiritual formation that stopped at understanding. What I wasn’t finding was a place that held both — that brought together the depth of spiritual direction with the forward movement of coaching, and wrapped it in honest, relational community and conversation. That’s what Greater Grounds became.

Over time, a pattern emerged that I started calling the E4 Model: Encounter, Explore, Engage, Express. Not a formula. Not a quick fix. A compass. A rhythm I kept seeing in every person who was experiencing real growth — they slowed down enough to encounter what was actually happening in their lives, got curious enough to explore the beliefs and patterns underneath, made intentional choices to engage differently, and then started expressing a truer version of themselves in how they lived and led and loved.
It’s a cycle, not a destination. And that’s the point.

What got me most excited — and still does — is the possibility that transformation is real. Not the inspirational-quote version. Real, embodied, sustainable change. The kind that shows up in your marriage, your leadership, your faith, and your relationships. The kind that doesn’t evaporate two weeks after a retreat.

I believe each person carries an inner wisdom — a seed of who they truly are — that doesn’t disappear even when it gets buried. This work is about uncovering that. And then learning how to live from it.
Settling for surface-level was no longer enough for me. And I’ve never met anyone who, when given real permission to go deeper, didn’t want to.

That’s why Greater Grounds exists. Not because I had a great business idea. But because something in me refused to ignore the tension — and chose to follow it instead.

Lisa, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

Who I Am & What I Do
I’m Lisa McClanahan — life coach, spiritual director, and founder of Greater Grounds, based in the Texas Hill Country. For over fifteen years, I’ve walked alongside people in seasons of transition, disorientation, and the quiet but persistent sense that something needs to change.
Before Greater Grounds, I spent decades in corporate HR — eventually as a Director, working across sectors from government contracting to tech to retail. I understood how people functioned. And how they got stuck. That thread, combined with a personal season of divorce, illness, and injury that cracked me open, led me to found Greater Grounds in 2012 — out of my own reckoning with the question: Am I actually living my own life?

What I Offer
Greater Grounds offers three core services:
Life Coaching — structured, relational, and forward-moving. We get honest about what’s not working, name what matters most, and take meaningful steps forward. This isn’t about optimizing performance. It’s about getting aligned.
Spiritual Direction & Companioning — slower and more contemplative. A sacred space to notice how God is actually moving in your life — not how you’ve been taught to think about God, but how the Spirit shows up in your real, ordinary, sometimes messy experience.
Retreats — because most of us never give ourselves permission to stop and pay attention. Retreats create the environment for the deeper work to finally begin.

The Problem I Solve
Most people who find their way to Greater Grounds aren’t broken. They’re functioning well by every external measure. But something feels off — disconnected. Like they’ve been performing a version of themselves rather than actually being.
That disconnection doesn’t stay contained. It shows up in decisions, marriages, leadership, and faith. What I offer is space to slow down, tell the truth, and engage the deeper work most people keep delaying because they don’t know where to take it.

What Sets Me Apart
There’s no shortage of life coaches. And there’s no shortage of spiritual directors. What’s rare is someone who holds both — with equal depth and integrity.
Most coaching focuses on performance and outcomes. Most spiritual direction focuses on interior attentiveness. Real transformation, in my experience, requires both — together. That’s what the E4 Transformation Model makes possible: Encounter, Explore, Engage, Express — a cyclical compass that integrates honest self-awareness with courageous, embodied action.
I’m not here to fix you or hand you a five-step plan. I’m here to walk with you through a process that is honest, relational, and genuinely transformational — where your whole self is welcome and your actual life, not an idealized version of it, is the focus.

What I Want You to Know
This isn’t quick-fix work. But if you’re living a life that looks right from the outside and feels misaligned on the inside — and you’re ready to be honest about it — this is for you.
You don’t have to have it figured out. You just have to be willing to show up.
Greater Grounds exists because settling for the surface was never enough. And I believe you were made for more than that too.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

There’s a moment I come back to often.
It was 2011. I was finally coming out the other side of a five-year battle with a chronic auto-immune disorder. I had partnered with holistic health providers, done the hard work, and was genuinely on a healing path. I remember the feeling of getting my footing back — of lacing up my shoes and heading out for a morning jog in my own neighborhood, thinking: I’m returning to myself.

And then a car hit me. Hit and run. My lower left leg was crushed.

I wish I could tell you I responded with grace and equanimity from day one. What I can tell you is that somewhere in that season — the physical pain, the stillness I was forced into, the accumulating weight of a life that was also unraveling in other ways — something shifted in me. Not a collapse. A cracking open.
Because it was in that same season that I finally got honest. About a marriage that wasn’t working. About a version of myself I’d been performing for years — capable, competent, holding it all together — while quietly losing the thread back to who I actually was.

Most people would have called that a season of falling apart. And it was. But it was also the season that gave me Greater Grounds.

The desert fathers and mothers had a word for it — the dark night — those seasons when everything you’ve been leaning on gives way and you’re left with nothing but the truth. I’ve learned to trust those seasons now. Not because they don’t hurt, but because I’ve seen what grows on the other side of them.
That’s not theory for me. That’s my life.

And it’s why, when someone walks into a session carrying something heavy and says I don’t know how I’m going to get through this — I can look them in the eye and say: I know this kind of ground. And there is a way through.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

For most of my life, I believed hard work was the answer to everything.
And honestly? It served me well — for a while. I grew up with a work ethic that was bone-deep. I climbed the corporate ladder in HR, took on more responsibility, moved across sectors, earned the titles. I was the person who outworked the room. If something wasn’t working, I put my head down and pushed harder. That was my operating system.

But here’s what I didn’t realize: I was working hard in the wrong direction for a long time.
I wasn’t lazy. I was unclear. And there’s a massive difference.

The unraveling came in 2011. When my marriage ended and I was forced into stillness — first by illness, then literally by a car that crushed my leg and put me on the ground — I couldn’t outwork my way through it. For the first time in my life, the engine that had always carried me had no road to run on. And in that stillness, the question I’d been too busy to ask finally caught up with me:

What am I actually working toward? And is it mine?
The answer was uncomfortable. I had been incredibly diligent — and profoundly unintentional. I had been building a life shaped more by expectations, momentum, and sheer output than by any honest reckoning with who I was and what I actually wanted. I was working hard. I just hadn’t stopped long enough to ask why — or for what — or for whom.
That’s the lesson I had to unlearn. That effort is enough. That if you just push harder, stay later, do more — it will all add up to something meaningful.

It doesn’t. Not without clarity. Not without the willingness to stop and ask the harder questions: Who am I beneath all this doing? What actually matters to me? What does faithfulness to my own life actually look like?
What I’ve learned — and what I now help others discover — is that intentionality is far more powerful than intensity. Clarity about who you are and what you’re called to will take you further than any amount of hustle ever could. Because when you’re clear, your effort is no longer scattered. It becomes focused. Directed. Alive.

The E4 Model I work from was really born here — in this unlearning. Before you can explore or engage or express anything meaningful, you have to encounter yourself honestly. You have to slow down long enough to tell the truth about your life. That’s not soft work. In many ways it’s the hardest work there is.
But it’s the work that actually changes things.

I spent years being productive. I’m far more interested now in being intentional. And the difference between those two things? It’s everything.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.greatergrounds.org/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lisadmcclanahan/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lisa.mcclanahan.71
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-d-mcclanahan/

Image Credits

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