Carve Your Own Path

Episode 926: Carve Your Own Path, with Laura Gassner Otting

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Carve your own path to achieve happiness and free time. Learn from Laura Gassner Otting on how to carve your own path too.

It’s time to carve your own path once you’re done listening to the experience and journey of Laura throughout her career. You will learn a lot from this podcast episode and you might be inspired to start living the life you want to have.

Laura Gassner Otting speaks with change agents, entrepreneurs, investors, leaders, and donors to get them past the doubt and indecision that consign their great ideas to limbo. She delivers strategic thinking, well-honed wisdom, and catalytic perspective informed by decades of navigating change across the start-up, nonprofit, political, and philanthropic landscapes.

carve-your-own-path

What you will learn from this episode about how to carve your own path:

  • Laura shares her fascinating career path and explains how she ended up working in the White House at age 21 helping to develop AmeriCorps
  • Why you need to carve your own path first before you can enjoy the life that you’ve dreamed of
  • How Laura established her own firm, the Nonprofit Professionals Advisory Group, and why she chose to exit the firm after nearly 15 years
  • Why exiting her firm was one of the greatest challenges of Laura’s life, and how she came up with an innovative exit strategy
  • Why everyone defines success differently, and why Laura defines her own success not by profitability but by happiness and free time
  • Why Laura decided to write her book Limitless: How to Ignore Everybody, Carve your Own Path, and Live Your Best Life
  • Why Laura began to experience a lack of self-confidence, and how she wrote Limitless in just three weeks once inspiration struck
  • How Laura realized that putting clients’ problems first and offering clear solutions was the right path to take in her business
  • Laura shares a story of giving a signed copy of Limitless to Good Morning America’s Robin Roberts and then getting a booking on the show as a result
  • Why Laura believes that being authentic, offering value, and being open to possibility have been the keys to some of the incredible opportunities she has had
  • How to get yourself unstuck from your current situation and be able to carve your own path towards your dream life

Resources:

Additional Resources:

 

 

Carve Your Own Path: Full Episode Transcript

 

Get ready to find your recipe for success from America’s top business owners here at Onward Nation with your host, Stephen Woessner.

 

Good morning. I’m Stephen Woessner, CEO of Predictive ROI and your host for Onward Nation, where I interview today’s top business owners so we can learn their recipe for success, how they built and highly skilled their business. In fact, my team at Predictive ROI will continue to rebuild and scale our free resources section on PredictiveROI.com. So you can now download some brand new books about the Trojan horse sales, about how to build out your client avatar, about how to do business to business, podcasting, the list of resources, the new resources goes on and on.

 

And these are strategies we’ve compiled from the brilliant insights shared by our very generous guests. Just go to PredictiveROI.com/Resources and whatever your request, we will send it right to your inbox. 

 

Listen to more of Laura’s podcast and you can carve your own path

 

Carve Your Own Path: Laura Gassner Otting’s Introduction

 

Before we welcome today’s very special guest, Laura. Guests in our audience, let me share some additional context about why, when Laura and I were going back and forth and she was considering a schedule and so forth, why I was over the moon excited Onward Nation when she said yes.

 

As you know, success and happiness doesn’t always balance one another. And sometimes there’s guilt around that. And then sometimes we feel stuck because we want to be somewhere and we can’t get there with our business. Well, if you’ve ever felt stuck either in your business and your life outside of your business, this conversation with Laura is exactly what you need.

 

She delivers strategic thinking. She delivers well-honed wisdom. And what I love about her is this catalytic perspective that she pulls from decades of being able to do this, decades of working in the trenches with startups and nonprofits, as well as political landscapes, too. She’s also the author of the Washington Post bestselling book limitless. How do you ignore everybody?

 

Carve your own path and live your best life mission driven, moving from profit to purpose? So with that said, welcome to Onward Nation, Laura. 

 

Listen to more of Laura’s podcast and you can carve your own path

 

Carve Your Own Path: Laura’s Path and Journey

 

Hey Stephen, it is so great to be here with you this morning. Well, it is great to have you here. And as I said in the introduction, I was over the moon excited when you said yes.

 

And I know that there’s a lot that we’re going to cover here. But before we dive in, I mean, obviously your bio is impressive. You’ve accomplished so much. You’ve worked in the white House. I mean, there’s just so much that you have done with AmeriCorps. And I mean, your background, the depth of expertise is obviously significant and so interested in you.

 

And just a couple of little, you know, snippets doesn’t do it justice. So take us behind the curtain, tell us more about you. Tell us more about your past. And then we’ll dive into your book and what you’re working on today. Well, about me, I am an unrepentant, unapologetic dork. I am an optimist.

 

I am a believer that there is an adventure around every corner if you just look hard enough. I believe that you say yes and you figure it out later. But you have to figure out what to say yes to, right? You don’t say yes to all the stuff you say yes to the stuff that matters to you, and then you figure out how to make it happen.

 

I dropped out of law school when I was 20 years old. I had graduated early from high school, and I graduated early from college, and then I dropped out of law school right on time. Joined a presidential campaign and jumped into cities I’d never been to towns whose names I will never remember and put on rallies for tens of thousands of people whose names I will or faces I will never forget.

 

And I ended up in the White House. At the age of 21, helping to build AmeriCorps. And you know, when you spend your formative years, your first career. I mean, my first real job was changing bedpans in a hospital, but my first actual real career was working in the white House. And when you spend your days working with the best and the brightest, having to deliver brilliance on a very short time frame in a 24 hour news cycle, you don’t get intimidated by a lot.

 

And you also don’t believe that any of you’re just you’re schooled in the idea that anything is possible. They just have to find the way in. You just have to figure out how to make it happen. And so my career really has been shaped by this energy that I’ve always felt. And when I was in the white House for four years waiting to go back out on the campaign trail again, my mentor said to me, you know, you’re kind of too old to get back on a campaign bus and eat cold pizza and sleep on high school gymnasium floors.

 

I mean, I was all 25 at the time, but that’s like donkey’s years in the campaign world. And he’s like, you can’t, you’re too old for that. And you’re kind of too young to be the domestic policy advisor. So go talk to my friend Arnie Miller. He runs Isaacson Miller, the largest search firm in the world. That’s specifically nonprofit work.

 

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Carve Your Own Path: Starting a Business and Giving Birth

 

You go work in a nonprofit for four years, then you’ll come back and do something in Al Gore’s campaign. And I said, great, awesome sounds terrific. I sat down with the headhunter within five minutes. I was like, wait a minute. This job’s in Boston. The guy I’m dating right now, who I know is the one, is moving to Boston.

 

I should go work for you. Forget the nonprofits. I should go work in your firm. And he was like, yep, you should. And I said, great, I’ll take the job. What do you do exactly? So I became a headhunter, you know, what do you do when you have all of them, you know, you have no ostensible skills, but you have a role that I took on a horse.

 

You go into headhunting, and I work for him for four years. And I really did learn from the most amazing people in the world how to do this work well. And then I realized one day that the business model wasn’t working for me, that the business model was set up. It was a search firm that was a for profit firm that worked specifically in the nonprofit sector, but it was a firm that was set up in a way that it felt like it was profit first and client mission second.

 

And that wasn’t why I got into it. And I realized one day that there was a different way that we could do it, that could actually we could actually make more money and we could serve our clients better and charge them less, and we could make it mission first and make enough profit as well. And once I realized I wasn’t part of the solution, that left me in a place where all I knew was that I was part of the problem.

 

And so that’s when I launched my own firm. I was like 11 months pregnant with my oldest son. The pro tip to all of your Onward Nation business owners is don’t start a business when you’re about to give birth to your first child. That’s a challenging time. Fast forward six weeks on 24 hours of labor, an unplanned C-section.

 

And there I am, sitting at my desk, trying to figure out what on earth I have just done to my career. But I ran that firm for 15 years. It was exceptionally successful. We grew 100% every year for the first ten years only. But then I realized that I couldn’t pull my team over the hill of innovation one more time without them throwing me out on, like, on an ice floe, like Henry Hudson, just to, like, be gone.

 

Because I was so interested in them, I was so interested in, in, in how to be the solution for the market that they didn’t even realize that, you know, to a problem they didn’t even realize they had yet. And, my team really wanted to just take the engine out on the road and see how fast they could run it.

 

And the better I got it. My work being 18 to 24 months ahead of the market and the better they got it. Their work being focused on today, right now, this moment, this client, the further apart we were and the more lonely and the more bored I became. 

 

Listen to more of Laura’s podcast and you can carve your own path

 

Carve Your Own Path: How to Successfully Exit Your Business

 

So I turned to my business partner and I said, okay, I need a plan and a five year plan.

 

It was a great exit. Sold the firm to my people, which is difficult to do in a professional services environment. And then I got asked to do a Ted talk, and that Ted talk got some attention. And the next thing you know, I’m now making my living as a professional, paid public speaker and author, with a great story and for a variety of different reasons.

 

And in one I’ll key in on is the one that you shared. Last is that you were able to accomplish essentially one of the dreams of every professional services firm owner, which we have many of the listeners of Onward Nation. Being able to create a succession plan, to be able to successfully exit from the business and then be able to go off and do something else that really feeds your heart and so forth.

 

Well done. Because as you know, not every business owner, in fact, a very small percentage of business owners get to do what you just did or did. Yeah, I have two children, and I’ve run three marathons. I got up on a stage in front of 2600 people in the Boston Opera House, having never given a public address, ever, and did a 12 minute talk with no notes and no net.

 

And I will tell you that exiting my firm is the hardest profession. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. Why? Because I was surprised at how emotional it was for everyone else. I’m not like a super emotional person. I often describe myself as a socialized male. I’m a little, you know, I’m very logical in the way that I think about things and what I.

 

What I failed to understand was that this exit was really scary for all of them. And I failed to understand that they were going to go through, like the seven stages of grief. Right? That first they are angry at me, then they negotiate to try to figure out a way to keep me. Then they did.

 

They they blame me, you know, all the stages that you go through and and I ended up feeling, you know, so what we did is when we finally got to the point by two years into the five year exit process that I knew, we all knew that I was going to leave one way or another, right?

 

Good or bad, I was leaving at that point, I was going to be 45 years old. That business was going to be 15 years old. I’ve seen you do an executive search for 20 years. It felt like good numbers. Right? It was time to go. And it’s a couple years into it and everybody knew, you know, my business partner knew like it was time.

 

Listen to more of Laura’s podcast and you can carve your own path

 

Carve Your Own Path: Making A Good Conversation Before Exiting

 

So we did a valuation of the firm and the valuation of the firm came back with a really big number because, as I said, we were really successful. And my business partner turned to me and she said, you know, I don’t know if I can pay that. Like, I don’t know if we can find anyone that’ll pay that.

 

And even if we do, who’s to say that the day that you leave the company is still going to be that valuable? You’re the founder. And that was the moment where things kind of went off the rails a little bit, because that was a moment where I ended up tying my ego into the fact that they didn’t feel that maybe I am not of that value.

 

Do I not deserve that money? Haven’t I worked so hard? Didn’t I not pay myself for the first five years before you became my partner, before you even saw all those things that, you know, all those emotions that people go through. And I turned to my husband and I was, you know, in this, like, fit of pique.

 

And I said, you know, I just can’t believe that they don’t value me. And he said, it’s not that they don’t value you, they’re nervous. They don’t know if the company is going to be that valuable. You never ran this company for maximum profitability. You ran it for maximum impact in the world, for maximum flexibility in your lifestyle.

 

That’s why you wanted to be an entrepreneur. You ran it for plenty of profit. You made plenty of money. But that wasn’t your first driver because. So why are you trying to sell it for maximum profitability? What if you sold it for maximum impact in the world and maximum flexibility in your life? He said. Because everything you’ve ever created over the course of the last 20 years of your career, whether it’s, you know, government programs or political, fundraising groups or philanthropic groups or other businesses, they all still exist.

 

And I’m really proud of that. The fact that I have not built cathedrals, I built institutions. And when he said that to me, I went, oh, oh, oh. And then I realized that it was this sort of like this ugly ego that I needed to be loved and needed and wanted and valued in this way that was tied to money, to the dollar sign.

 

That didn’t make any sense, because it wasn’t consonant with who I was when I led the company, when I founded the company. And so when I had this conversation, my business partner, we were both like, oh yeah, okay, that’s what’s not working. And what we decided to do was we decided that I was going to sell her the business for a dollar.

 

So plus a percentage of revenue for the following five years, as long as they. Yeah, as long as they showed a dollar of profit, I would get a percentage of revenue for the next five years because what we decided was, look, five years is about the amount of time that I can cast a shadow back and say, I still have some responsibility for the success that you have after five years.

 

It’s all on them. I’m ancient history, right. That’s the end. And, you know, there were some things that were tied into it, like I got quarterly financial reports. Anything that went 10% above or below what the spending or the, you know, was in the past, I would it would be flagged for me so I couldn’t miss it, you know, like they were there were things to make sure that they couldn’t pull a fast one on me.

 

There were things in there to make sure that I wasn’t out there, you know, helping the competition or badmouthing them. I mean, we all had skin in the game because at the end of the day, what I realized was I believe deeply in this firm. They are the best in the business at what they do, and I’m proud that I helped build that firm.

 

Listen to more of Laura’s podcast and you can carve your own path

 

Carve Your Own Path: Importance of Being Mission-Driven

 

So if I didn’t believe that they could survive me, then I wasn’t a responsible CEO while I was there, and I wasn’t responsible to be leaving because those 25 people that worked for me depended on me and they depended on me, both in my presence and in my exit. And here’s the piece. It’s now been four years of the five years, and it turns out, I’m going to make more money than if they paid me the check.

 

In the beginning, I was so curious. And because it’s beautiful. It’s awesome that the economics worked out that way. But, like, I have never heard and I have never heard of a business owner, Onward. I have never heard a business owner, architect and exit like Laura is describing. Because now not only that’s great that you’re rewarded economically like that, that’s awesome.

 

But you really, in my opinion, put mission driven like this thing for you. I know that mission driven is so important. You really put that there. I mean, you put your money where your mouth is, you believe to be mission driven. Boom. Here it is. Here’s an exit that is designed to be mission driven. That is so awesome.

 

Yeah. I mean, and let me be clear, the firm was decidedly for profit. I started the firm because I thought I could make more money than when I was at the other firm. I was a for profit firm, and I did, and lots of people from that other firm came to join us. In fact, the CEO of that firm called me up one day and said, you need to stop stealing my people.

 

And I said, I’m not stealing anybody. All I’m doing is answering the phone when they call me. So, you know, you’ve got some work to do in your house. I’m not going to turn them away if they call me. I put together a better employee proposition than you, and I haven’t done anything to let them know about it.

 

They’ve come to find out. So, you know, we ran the firm very much with this idea of how do we make the most amount of money that we can while serving a sector that we care about, being able to work from home, having maximum flexibility to go to our kids’ music recitals or soccer games or things like that.

 

I didn’t care if my people worked at two in the morning or two in the afternoon. If the client wanted them at two in the afternoon, they needed to be there. But, you know, executive pay and people say that all the time, like, well, how did you judge the progress? How did you judge the work of your team?

 

And I was like, by the work, it’s pretty obvious. But, it was a really difficult exit and mostly because I had, you know, in the new book that I wrote, limitless How to ignore everybody, carve your own path and Live Your Best life. I talk about the fact that we have this externally defined idea of success that is handed to us by somebody else at some point before we even remember, like how we got it.

 

And it’s usually like, get the right job, have the right title, make the right money, live in the right house with the right spouse. You know, where the right clothes and exactly the right size. And at some point we say my value is equal to the money that I make. And that’s actually not true for all of us.

 

So for me, I was more interested in having the control over my own life to be able to work from where I want, when I wanted to do what I want with the clients that I loved in a way that made sense for me. And if I made 10% less, but I was 80% happier, that was a win for me.

 

Listen to more of Laura’s podcast and you can carve your own path

 

Carve Your Own Path: How Big Should You Grow Your Firm?

 

Now we all have the want to make numbers and the need to make numbers right. The need to make numbers, table stakes. You have to pay your mortgage, I get that, but between your need to make a number and your want to make a number is a whole lot of distance and you have to decide inside of that distance what’s going to mean success for you.

 

So it might mean I like lots and lots of money because I like to go to fancy cosmopolitan vacations and take, you know, long weekends and wake up in the four seasons with my breakfast in bed. Or you may say, actually, I want to make that breakfast over the campfire at sunrise in the morning, like, way the hell out somewhere in the national parks.

 

If you’re a four seasons person, success means more money. But if you’re the national parks person, success means more time off. You bet. That’s what we get to do as entrepreneurs. And when the realization and I know that you address this is that once that person reaches that want to number, that doesn’t necessarily mean that now the value proposition is equalized.

 

And they’ve found the balance between success and happiness. There might still be that empty pit, because they haven’t really come to the whole mission driven. And the reason why. Right? Yes, yes. And in fact, there are studies that show that after a certain number and the number’s pretty low. It’s like 80 grand or something that you don’t get much happier with, which is staggering.

 

Yeah. You’re just there and all you’re doing is creating a treadmill that’s going faster and faster. I remember we had a terrible facilitator come in to facilitate an annual retreat. We had one year and she opened up the retreat by saying, I want to go around the room, and I want to have everybody tell me, what do you think the ideal number of staff would be for this firm?

 

How big should you grow? And we went around the room and everyone was like, we should be 12 people, we should be 24 people, we should be 50 people. And they got to me at the end. And at the time we were like 17 folks. And I just said, it’s the dumbest question I’ve ever heard. I mean, okay, so why do you think it’s a dumb question?

 

Because I could run a firm for, you know, where I’m making a 60% profitability on every contract that I have with 17 people, or I could run a firm where I’m making 30% profitability, on every contract that has 50 people in it, it turns out I’m making the same amount of money. But when you have 50 people, you have 50 potential headaches, you have 17 people, you only have 17 potential headaches.

 

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Carve Your Own Path: Manifesting Things Through the Work That You Do

 

And, you know, the bigger you grow, the harder it is to sort of keep the culture and keep the control and all of that. So you just have more projects. And so I said, that’s a terrible question. I would rather go around the room and say, how much money do you individually want to make? What’s the lifestyle that you would like this job to provide for you?

 

What are the values that you want to manifest through the work that you do every day? And what’s the kind of career trajectory that you would like to get from this phase in your employment? Good. Let’s build a company that throws off that as opposed to just a number of staff, because all that is my headache and I have zero.

 

Like I’m already running fast on this treadmill. I have no interest in speeding up because all I’m getting are cramps. Well, Amen. And we all have the same 86,400 seconds in a day. And in what really is fulfilling. You know, when you mentioned 80,000 and I’ve heard that number two is and when I heard that I was staggering, I’m like, wow, how can that number be?

 

I don’t want to say it sounds so bad to say so low, because obviously $80,000 a year is a great living. But to think that it’s not, you know, a much higher number. That’s why I was really surprised by it. But if we’re not contributing toward where we want to be, then it doesn’t matter what the number is, right?

 

I mean, 80% give me you can live a perfectly great life on $80,000, but then you open up Instagram and you see people with their private jets and their fancy cars and their great vacations, and you go, oh, if only I had the amount of money to do that, I’d be happy. And most of that is just crap, too.

 

Most of it’s quite frankly, half that stuff is rented. It’s, you know. Right. But if you’re sitting in your job with $80,000 and you say, if only I had $8 million or $1 billion, I’d be happy. It’s fascinating to me that the delta of happiness does not equal the delta of dollars. Yes. I mean, you know, I follow a bunch of super wealthy people on Instagram because I just think it’s fascinating.

 

And, you know, you have these people who are self-made billionaires or who inherited their money and they’re posting the same stuff about, you know, their kids being sassy or being frustrated about, you know, having a leak in their ceiling. I mean, yeah, they have more people they can call, but, you know, their kids are still giving them the same attitude as they drive to school in the morning.

 

They’re just doing a nicer car. But they still had the same exact problems. Amen. Take us inside your book. Why did you decide to write this book? So this is sort of an interesting story. I, when I left my firm and I had that moment of, oh, my God, who am I when I’m no longer Laura Gassner Otting CEO.

 

Here’s my business card. Right? I had this moment of crisis, like identity crisis, like, who am I now? And, I was at, I was actually at an event, I was co-chairing an art auction for a local nonprofit, and a friend of mine who was a local newscaster introduced me to somebody and said, this is my dear friend Laura.

 

She dedicates her life to philanthropy, and it’s true. And yet I still couldn’t decide if I wanted to stick my cocktail fork in her eyes or mine. Right? I was like, I am an entrepreneur. I am somebody who does things. And being introduced in this sort of one dimensional way, while it was true, it was only part of who I was.

 

Listen to more of Laura’s podcast and you can carve your own path

 

Carve Your Own Path: If Doing Something Scares You, Just Go Do It

 

And, the very next day, I got a phone call to, potentially, do some consulting with some folks, and I turned it down. And then I had to decide who I was because I was getting defined by, you know, people as potentially being consultants or being defined by people as, you know, now doing this philanthropy thing.

 

And so I bought LauraGassnerOtting.com and I started blogging. I just started writing about stuff that I was thinking about. And a friend of mine who was an executive producer, Ted Cambridge, calls me up and says, hey, I saw your recent blog post. I think it’s a really interesting idea. In fact, it’s an idea we’re spreading. Maybe you should do a Ted talk.

 

And I was on the phone. I picked up the phone, and on speakerphone in the car with my son, who was then, 14 years old. And I said, no, like no way. Not interested. Scared to death. Have no interest in doing public speaking. I’ve always liked it. Let me introduce you. These great candidates. Right.

 

I was always, you know, putting the spotlight under the people. And I hang up the phone and my son turns to me and he’s like, hey, mom, don’t you always tell me that I should do hard things. And don’t you always tell me that if it doesn’t challenge me, it doesn’t change me. And don’t you always tell me that life starts on the other side of fear.

 

And I was like, yes. And he goes, so, mom, what gives? Nice. So I call my friend back up and I’m like, okay, I’m in. Fast forward six weeks, I’m on the Ted stage. 12 minutes, no notes, no net, 2600 people, Boston Opera House theater lights. Crazy scary. Create. Incredibly scary. And I nailed, like 11.5 minutes of it.

 

And then there was a moment where I looked to the stage left, and you can tell that I completely forgot what I was supposed to say next. Oh no. And then I pulled it back together and I finished it, so it was good enough. That talk got some attention. That attention got me offers to speak places. And then people started offering me money to speak.

 

And I said, this is a job I could do. This is a job. And so I started going and getting paid to speak. And when those offers started coming in for, you know, five figures, I thought I’d better really learn how to do this. So I learned how to speak, and I started getting bigger and bigger gigs, you know, 2005 thousand people.

 

And then I started feeling this sort of lack of confidence. I’m on stage, and I’m talking about leadership and finding your voice and being confident. And ironically, I’m not feeling that confident because I’m looking around and everybody else has a book. So I thought, I better write a book. So I called a friend of mine and he said, you have 20 years of talking to people at these massive moments of career change, of stewarding leaders through these massive moments of upheaval, and helping organizations through them.

 

That’s your book. You don’t need a book. And I’m like, yeah, but I’m a girl, and I feel like women just get judged a little bit differently and I just need a little more umph. I need a little more heft behind my name. Also, because I ran a very successful for profit firm, but it got labeled as, oh, you’re the nonprofit girl.

 

Well, dual. Not actually. Really. I’m not. So I called a publisher and, and said, I want to write this book. And he said, yeah, we’d love for you to write that. We would love for you to write that for us. But before you do that, we’re doing this guide book series, and we want you to do a book about working with purpose.

 

And I said, I don’t really want to do that. I’ve already written that book. I’m bored of that topic. I don’t talk about nonprofit stuff anymore. He goes, yeah, yeah, but just do it and then we’ll do your book. So three weeks into the process, writing the Non-obvious Guide to Purpose, doing work that matters, I’m fighting with the editor back and forth because I’m just not working.

 

Like I understand why people are unhappy even though they’re successful and I cannot fit it into the guidebook format of chapter one. Problem solution. Chapter two problem solution. Chapter three problem solution. Chapter four. Slit your throat because you’re bored, right? I just could not do that. And I called him up and I said, this isn’t working. I’m not your author.

 

You should fire me. And he said, yeah, I agree. And I said, wait, what? And he said, but I think you have a bigger idea, right? We have all of these people who are going along in their life and they’re so miserable, even though on paper they’re happy. And I think that we should do that in a big idea book, and we should do it in hardback in the spring when Big Idea books come out.

 

Listen to more of Laura’s podcast and you can carve your own path

 

Carve Your Own Path: Making Yourself Limitless

 

And I said, wait, what? But that was your original book idea in the first place, right? Well, my original book idea was about confidence and finding your leadership voice, and it’s a little bit different. And the editor that I was fighting with back and forth, God bless her, because she was the reason why I realized that there was like, I was like getting so upset about the fact that she was dismissing the idea because it didn’t fit to the guy book that I was like, oh, no, it’s got to be it’s got to be this.

 

So I called a friend of mine and in a total panic, Clay Bear, who was brilliant at marketing, and I said, what am I going to do? And he goes, well, what do you want people to feel like when they finish reading this book? And I said, I’m just so sick and tired of everybody being limited by everybody else’s definition of success, being told to follow their passion and to lean in and to you know, to do what you love.

 

And you never work a day in your life. And I’m so sick of everybody else having this one myopic, unflinching definition of success being pushed on them, that I just want them to stop listening to everybody else and decide what they want to be and just be happy. And he said, so you want them to be limitless.

 

You want them to ignore everybody, carve their own path and live their best life. Oh my gosh. And I went, oh my God, I love you. I don’t talk to you nearly enough, but I need to hang up the phone right the hell now and go write that book. And literally three weeks later, the book was done, which is this meta moment of I was so limited by the external definition of the way the guidebook should be, that I couldn’t actually get my full force of knowledge and energy and wisdom from the last 25 years of doing this work onto the paper.

 

And as soon as I became limitless, I was able to write the book, as you know, title creation is never that smooth. That was amazing that that happened like that in that conversation. I mean, it took 45 minutes to get to it. But it really did crystallize. And that was, that was really a fulcrum moment for the book, because I suddenly was not writing a non obvious guide to purpose, doing work that matters.

 

But I was writing limitlessly about how to ignore everybody, carve your own path and live your best life. And that is so much more consonant with my energy and who I am and my moxie. That’s it really. I feel like the book has been so successful, you know, debuting at number two on the Washington Post bestseller list, behind Michelle Obama.

 

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Carve Your Own Path: Practicing a Pitch

 

I’ve been on the Today show, I’ve been on Good Morning America. All of it, because it’s really good, like the medium and the message and the mood and all of it, is in consonance. It’s not fighting with itself, you know. You know, you can tell. I used to walk into pitch clients and my clients would say, got it.

 

You really love what you do. And I was like, yeah, I have the best job in the world and I can’t wait to do it for you. And I would sell 98% of what I pitched because people want to be part of momentum and energy. Well, they do, but they realize that your momentum and energy is directed toward them.

 

It’s not about you. It’s about how you can create impact for them. Just like your book, it’s not about you. It’s about the reader. And you have put your emphasis on the reader, your audience, and helping them become limitless. This is not about you, and that’s a huge difference. It’s so true. You know, for the first few years of running my firm, I used to walk in and I would be so proud of our business model, which was so different from all the traditional search firms.

 

And I go in and I tell them all about it, and I would get like, I don’t know, a third of the stuff that we pitch, which I thought was pretty good. You know, I was just like, you know, a young kid who was working for me and my six weeks went to my Dalmatian living in, you know, in the attic of my house.

 

I was pretty proud of that. That was good stuff. I was going against the big guns. And then I did a practice pitch for a friend of mine who was a CEO of a very large philanthropy. And he said, yeah, the pitch is fine, I guess, but do you find me a good candidate?

 

And it’s like, well, what are you talking about? He goes, you never say that. You spend your entire pitch talking about the way that you the way that your, your, your search firm is formed and your philosophy and the way you go about work, but you never actually say the words, we will find you the best candidate, because every other search firm walks in the door and says, let’s talk about your problem.

 

Your problem is that you need a great new CEO. We find great new CEOs. Now let me tell you how. And I used to walk in and make the same mistake that so many people do, which is I present the PowerPoint. On the first page of the PowerPoint, have my logo on the second page on my PowerPoint, have the building, and the third page of the PowerPoint had my picture and the picture of some of our principles.

 

And the third, the fourth page had our mission statement. I wasn’t till I got to the fifth page, they even talked about anything they remotely cared about. So we changed that completely. And we walked in and we said, you have a unique problem. The good news is it’s unique to you. It’s not unique to us. Find the very best candidates out there, and we do it better than anybody else for less money than anyone will charge you.

 

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Carve Your Own Path: A Good Thought Leadership Story

 

But we do it the best because we figured out a way to pay our people better. Let me tell you how we’ll solve all these problems for you. And they go, oh, now I’m listening. Yeah. And I can hear if I know that our Onward Nation business owners can hear the enthusiasm in which you share that it just creates momentum in the room, doesn’t it?

 

Yeah. I haven’t even been in that business for the last four years, and I could still pitch the hell out of it because, you know, it is it. Everybody wants to know that you’re going to take their problem in your hands and care for it, and solve it as if it was your own. They don’t want to know that you’re applying.

 

You know, people walk in and they give you this pitch and you’re like, okay, the pitch is all about your problem. Your problem is that you need more clients. Your problem is that you need more revenue. Your problem is that you need to hit your quarterly goals. What about my problem? Because you know what I care about more than your problem.

 

My problem? Yep. This is exceptional. Take is one of the things that I love about the story of the book where you just took us behind the curtain. There is a great thought leadership story. It’s a great story of discovery. And now how that book has propelled you even further. So tell us the story that you told me in the green room about, good morning America and how you got there, because that does connect in with the book, which is an amazing story about perseverance.

 

But again, focusing on the audience and having great content. So tell us that story. It’s awesome. 

 

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Carve Your Own Path: Life As a Professional Public Speaker

 

Okay. Yeah. You know, I’m so bad at book promotion, I should be like, pitching all about the book nonstop, but done like a hundred podcasts at this point and all sorts of national TV. I’m just excited to talk about things that will help your audience.

 

So we could talk about the book. So, I make my living now as a professional public speaker. And I was speaking at three events in Canada, one in Calgary, one in Vancouver and one in Toronto, and there were five speakers at each event. I was the fourth speaker each time, and the fifth speaker for the first two events was, you know, this unknown person who’s not doing much of any interesting work.

 

Right. So, that was pretty cool. I found out my book debuted at number two behind Michelle Obama, and I took a selfie with Malala during the same week. It was probably the weirdest week of my entire life. The following week, Malala couldn’t be the speaker because she had to go take final exams, you know, as one does.

 

So Robin Roberts was our fifth speaker and I have had a girl crush on Robin Roberts for a decade. I mean, I’ve just been so impressed how she’s broken through so many ceilings in the sports world and how she came out, you know, and, you know, on national TV. And now she’s, you know, made her message, which is the thing that she talks about her about her cancer and her illness and the recovery and all the rest.

 

And I’ve just thought that she lives a life of such courage, and optimism and so I spoke because as soon as she finished speaking, they rushed you off stage to go sign books. And I’m signing, like, 100 books. And by the time I get back backstage, Robin’s already on stage. So I didn’t get to meet her, and I had to leave because, you know, business travel is so glamorous.

 

I had to leave for, like, a race to get to the airport, to get home for some family stuff that night. So I wasn’t going to meet her. And I said to the MC, I’m so bummed. I really wanted to meet her. She is like, Forget Malala. Like Robin is like, she’s amazing. I just, I really wanted to meet her.

 

And, you know, I should also be on Good Morning America. He reaches down, takes one of my books from the stack and says, here, sign this for her, make it good, and I’ll make sure she gets it. Now, the reason he did this is because for the previous two events, I noticed that they were running a little bit late, and I went up to him and I was like, hey, I’m supposed to talk for 45 minutes, but I see you’re running, eight minutes late.

 

I could go 37 if you want. I can give you back that time. And he was like, you could, which is a big gift. Would you do that? It’s huge. And I said, yeah, of course you’re the star. Like, just because I’m on stage under the spotlight doesn’t make me the star. I want to make you look good.

 

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Carve Your Own Path: Inspiring Others Through Your Message

 

So if I can get you back on track, like I can tell one less story, I can be just effective. If I can’t be just effective at 37 minutes, I can afford 45 minutes. I shouldn’t be on stage for three minutes. Right? So I was like, of course I can, like, you’re the star. And I think he was so happy and grateful that I was easy to work with and that I wasn’t a diva.

 

And then I delivered on stage, and you know, that his audience loved me, that by the time the third day came along, he was like, oh, that’s like an easy thing I can do for Laura, no problem. So I signed the book. I make it really good. Right? Thank you for inspiring so many and making your message.

 

You’ve helped so many women and men become limitless. And he. I guess he gives it to her. And five days later, a friend of mine says, hey, I got a Facebook message. Friend of mine goes, Robin Roberts just mentioned your book on Good Morning America. And I was like, well, what? So she’s doing an interview with somebody.

 

She goes, so I’m reading this book right now where it says we should stop giving votes to other people who shouldn’t even have voices in our lives. And it’s called limitless. You should check it out, like literally on Good Morning America Live. And then she posted to her Instagram or Twitter and Facebook, which have a combination of like 3 million people or something.

 

And then she hands the book to the senior producer and says, book her. Now, the great part of the story is that we can have. Earlier, I got a rejection email from a junior producer who was a friend of a friend of a friend who was like, yeah, so we don’t have time for your book. Not interested. So, you know, what do you take from that?

 

Right? Like, if you can’t get in the door or you climb through a window, but also you have to show up and you have to bring you have to bring the goods stuff. You have to bring the substance. It can’t just be who do you know? And how do I get to you? And how do I ask for this favor?

 

In that favor, it has to be followed through on substance, and it has to be authentic. And it has to be real. Because when you show up for other people, they show up for you. Absolutely. And when you share that this just hit me because I didn’t know about the lesson that your 14 year old son taught to you from the backseat until you shared that a few minutes ago.

 

And so I’m taking this back to, okay, she’s on GMA. Awesome. She’s developed this relationship with Robin. Fantastic. She’s written this incredible book. She’s doing all this speaking, and it goes all the way back to your 14 year old son saying, wait a minute. Isn’t that what you tell us? And so how come you’re not doing that, mom?

 

And then. Right, he gave you the book and I will tell you that the whole Robin Roberts thing even goes back to another interesting story, which is a friend of mine, Mitch Joel, who called me up one day and said, hey, what are you doing tomorrow? I live in Boston. He lives in Montreal. And I was like, I got a board meeting.

 

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Carve Your Own Path: Planting Your Seeds Carefully

 

I got to do some writing. Not real all that much because. Good. Come to Montreal. Your book, these flights, he sends me the flights that will get me there in time. Booked these flights. My company is sponsoring this event tomorrow, and Joe Biden is the keynote speaker, and I can bring somebody backstage.

 

And I know you’re into politics, so if you can come, come on up. Now, I could have easily said, oh, I don’t know. I’m not sure. I can’t really do that. I can’t drink. But I went, I looked at my schedule and I said, you know what, I can do the board meeting from the phone at the airport and I can go do that.

 

And yes, like I said in the beginning, what do you say yes to? I said yes, right. Why not do it? What I didn’t know is that Mitch had a secret plan, which was to introduce me to the conference organizer and then say to me, good, now you know the conference organizer, write your book, make sure it’s good, keep a relationship for them throughout the year, and then he’ll put you on the stage next year.

 

And that was the stage where Robin Roberts was the keynote speaker. Amazing. So, you know, all the things that we do as business owners, as entrepreneurs, we never know which seeds are going to, which we never know which seeds are going to develop into flowers. But you have to plant a lot of seeds and, you know, we can spend a lot of time being really busy and being in your inbox and having everybody come by and say, can I pick your brain?

 

You got a minute? Can I just know, like, what are the things that are on your agenda today that are going to move you forward? I have 15 things I could work on today, but two of those things are getting my new speaker sizzle reel to speakers bureaus who are going to book me if I do nothing else today but those that send those two emails to make sure that they have it, then they’re making money for me while I’m doing all the rest of the stuff.

 

So it’s like, how do you prioritize what you do? How do you figure out what you say? Yes. Do you figure out you say, yes. The things that are going to help you, that might help other people that are going to bring you joy and that you are the most important person to be doing. Yep.

 

Saying yes to things that matter, saying yes to things that matter has that to bring it full circle. Oh my gosh, great great conversation. This has been exceptional. So very excited Onward Nation. Now I’m sure you can tell why. When Laura said yes, why I was just over the moon that she was going to join us for this conversation.

 

So I know we’ve covered a lot, Laura. But before we go, before we close out and say goodbye, any final advice you want to share? Anything you think we might have missed? And then please tell us the best way to connect with you and the best place to get your book. 

 

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Carve Your Own Path: Final Advice from Laura

 

Yeah, I would say that the one thing I would, I would give one piece of advice I would give to everyone else is to allow yourself the luxury to fail at living into everyone else’s definition of what’s going to make you happy.

 

There is a person that you are at this moment in time, at this stage and at this age, that may not be the person you were five years ago or ten years ago and isn’t gonna be the person you’re gonna be five and ten years from now. But you have a very personal rubric of what’s going to bring you consonance, what’s going to put you in alignment and, and flow with the very best of what you do is brought upon, to solve the problem at hand, and you’re being rewarded for it in a way that is personally meaningful to you.

 

So I want you to stop leaning in Onward Nation to everybody else’s definition of what’s going to be the right thing, but lean into that version of yourself instead. And if you’re not sure where to start, you can go to LimitlessAssessment.com and you can take it. It’s about a 15 minute quiz. I think you can tell from me I’m kind of tough.

 

So the quiz is a little tough. So give yourself some time to take it. There are a lot of questions, but it will help you understand how much you value calling connection, contribution and control and then give you some tips to get more of the things that you want, and to get rid of some of the ones that don’t actually matter to you.

 

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Carve Your Own Path: How to Connect with Laura

 

And all my good friends call me heylgo, so I made it really simple. You can find me all over the interwebs at heylgo, on all social media, hey, and online at heylgo.com. And the book is available on Amazon on Barnes Noble 800 CEO reads, and anywhere fine books are sold. Okay Onward Nation, no matter how many notes you took or how often you go back in, relisten to laws words of wisdom, which I sure hope that you do.

 

The key is you have to take everything that she so generously shared with you. Take it the lessons, take them, apply them into your business, in your life and accelerate your results and Laura, we all have the same 86,400 seconds today, as I said a few minutes ago, and I greatly appreciate you taking the time out of your compressed schedule to come on to the show to be our mentor and guide, help us move our businesses onward to that next level.

 

Thank you so much, my friend. Well, thank you for having me and thank you for being an exceptional interviewer. 

 

This episode is complete, so head over to OnwardNation.com for show notes and more food to fuel your ambition. Continue to find your recipe for success here at Onward Nation.

 

Listen to more of Laura’s podcast and you can carve your own path

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