You Might Be Chasing Someone Else’s Dream with Best Selling Author Laura Gassner Otting

Like, it's not do what you would do if you knew you couldn't fail. It's like do what you would do if you knew for sure you would fail and that you want to do it over and over and over until you get it right. That's your passion, right? Staying longer in that discomfort, getting comfortable being uncomfortable so that it gets easier every time. Because I do think discomfort is a muscle that we've kind of atrophied a bit. We're not practicing excellence enough. We're just kind of trying to cover our ass a lot of times. And so this process is this, this practice of who am I when I'm at my very best? And what kind of person is that? For me, I want to be that kind of ambitious.

Hey everybody, welcome back to the Unemployable Podcast. I'm Jeff Duden. If you thought being an argumentative child would make you a great lawyer only to pursue a law degree and ultimately drop out, get active in politics, build and sell a business in the executive search game, become a TEDx speaker, bestselling author, and global keynote speaker on ambition and success. Your name can only be the incredible, the world-famous Laura Gassner Otting. Welcome, Laura.

Wow. Well, you've done your homework.

Yes. Yes, absolutely. Well, it's not hard. I mean, you know, a great football coach recently just said, Google me, and that's all you have to do with you. And you pop up all over the place. I can't— as a matter of fact, you're chasing me all over the internet now.

Oh, gosh. Well, I guess I'll thank the people who are running my Google ads and all of my PR. They are, they are too good.

You have a solid retargeting game. All right, here's the opener. Here's the opener. Laura, are we our own biggest obstacle to achieving all of the things we want to do in life?

Well, that's a really interesting question because the answer, of course, is yes. But the more nuanced answer is what parts of us that have been influenced by other people are the us that get in the way of who we want to be. And I think a lot of that is, like you mentioned in the introduction, I was told by my 4th grade teacher that I was a really argumentative young woman and I should be a lawyer. And I was like, okay, that sounds good. And that idea was seeded into my head so early that by the time I got to law school, I'd had this definition of success in my back pocket that I couldn't even disaggregate. Like, did it come from the teacher? Did it come from my parents? Did it come from watching LA Law and Ally McBeal on TV? Right? Like, so, Yes, we are our own biggest obstacles, but a lot of times it's because we're carrying the baggage that was handed to us by somebody else.

Chris Collins has wrote a couple of books recently called I Am Leader. And if you— these books are massive tomes. They're like the coming down from the mountain. They're the tablets. I mean, they're about 12 pounds apiece. If I had a coffee table that was strong enough to hold them, I'd put them on there. But in the one is I Am and the one's Leader, it's a couple of the most interesting books I've seen, but the one thing that stood out to me was he talks a lot about locus of control and people. And, you know, he would say that 90% of people have an external locus of control, meaning they, whatever happens to them, they think it's inevitable. And, you know, they, they get impacted by their circumstances. And as opposed to if you have an internal locus of control, it's like, okay, these things happen to me, but they don't define me. And I'm just gonna kind of get on with it. And entrepreneurs and business owners. And when he said that, it's almost like you can't unsee it. And I'm in the franchise business. So when I talk to people and it's like, well, the marketing this and the market that and the competitors this and the suppliers that, and everything is an excuse of circumstances that happen to them. Whereas the people that just get on with it, they're just like, okay, everybody's facing the same thing. How am I going to deal with it? And they don't get tripped up on it. Is that what you're talking about?

Yeah, I I agree with that. I think that we spend a lot of times when things go wrong, looking for someone else to blame, looking to find an excuse, looking to find a reason. And I remember very early on as an entrepreneur, I got a meeting wrong with the client. I didn't show up on the right day. Like, I just, I just, I missed one of those really important, like seminal moments, like the make or break client that's gonna create, that's gonna change the trajectory of your business. And I called the client. And I apologized and I said, I'm really sorry that I missed it. My assistant put it in the calendar wrong. And this guy ripped me a new one. He didn't know me, I didn't know him, but he was like, let me give you a piece of advice. It's not your EA's fault. It's your fault. The buck stops with you. You either don't have the right system, you didn't hire the right person, you didn't have the right checks lined. Do not ever in your career throw somebody else under the bus. Do not look for excuses. Look in the mirror. And that was a really, I've never really thought about until you asked me that question, but that was such a seminal moment in my career that forced me to say like, there's never going to be an external locus. It's always me. It will always have to be me because even if it's not me, I'm deciding who those external voices are. I think we spend a lot of time letting people in our lives tell us who we should be and how we should be and what we should be and God forbid what we can't be. And a lot of times those people, don't really know who we are. Like, I, before we started recording, I was telling you about how I was just taking care of my dad who had hip replacement surgery. My dad is 83 years old. My dad was a surgeon in his career. I get on national television, as you know, since I'm chasing around the internet now on Good Morning America, the Today Show, et cetera, giving people advice about the workforce. And my father, who's been retired from surgery, so he was never in business, he hasn't been in the workforce for 40 years, spent the last 4 days giving me advice about what to do with my business. And I was like, that's great. But a lot of us, the problem is a lot of us give that person a voice when we shouldn't, right? And we give them a vote when frankly they shouldn't even have the voice. And so we get ourselves trapped in this place where we're letting people, just because they are physically or blood-related proximate to us, have opinions about who we should be and what we should be when really they love us, but they don't necessarily always know us.

Right. What, what work are you doing right now with the workforce? I know you're doing a lot of keynoting. Wonderhell, a great book. And I just, when I got into it, I was just like, this is so smart. I mean, and it's so relatable. Impostor Town and Burnout City. It is just, it is just a mouthful of truth, as my wife's grandfather used to say.

A mouthful of truth. I love that.

It's a mouthful of truth. But, um, so, but Tell me what you're doing now. Who are you working with? How are you spending your time? How you make an impact?

Yeah, well, I, you know, I just want to talk about Wonderhell for a second. I mean, I think Wonderhell, particularly with the franchise world, is just dead on where these franchisees feel themselves, because the whole idea of Wonderhell is this is amazing, it's incredible, it's wonderful that I've experienced some success, right? I decided to go off on my own. I decided I was unemployable, right? And I wanted to be my own boss, and I opened up this franchise. Well, that's great. It's been successful. Maybe I could open another. Maybe I could have 5. Maybe I could, you know, expand. Maybe I could create a portfolio. And we have this amazing moment of it's so wonderful. And then also inside of that moment, we see a version of ourselves that we never even knew was possible. And inside of that version, we then get a little excited, but we get a little scared. And then we're filled with uncertainty and anxiety and imposter syndrome and doubt and envy and exhaustion and burnout. So it's wonderful, but it's hell. It's a bit of wonder hell. And everybody I know from the franchise world who read it was like, this was me when I decided to leave the, you know, traditional employment and become a franchisee. And then it was me when I decided to open a second, and it was me when I decided to open a fourth, and it was me when I decided to open an eighth, right? Like, and it just keeps being me. And I'm like, yes, 'cause every one of us is constantly in between who we were yesterday and who we're becoming tomorrow. So, it's such a great, idea and space to give yourself permission to be uncomfortable when you're in that franchise world. The work that I'm doing with the workforce. So in 2019, when my last book Limitless came out, which was based around this idea that we're handed this definition of success and we pursue it, filling all the boxes. And at the same time, once it's all full, we're like, why have I done all the things right, but I still feel empty? Based on 20 years of doing executive search, where I would recruit people who were super successful But despite all this success, which is why I was calling them, they weren't very happy and they all called me back. I launched an assessment online at limitlessassessment.com and it's like 56 questions. It's pretty in-depth. It takes about 18 or so minutes to take. So it's a little bit of time, but the result of it helps people understand why they're not happy in their current work and what they should do to change themselves, their careers, or their workplace in order to become both successful and fulfilled. Looking back on that, started in January of 2019, I now have 10,000 results from 113 different countries since before, during, and now after the pandemic about what actually engages us in the work that we do. And so, the work that I'm doing now and the impact that I'm making is really going through and with self-taught multi-regression analysis, learning how to understand which factors are affecting the workforce. So, for example, If you are a leader and you think to yourself, bad leaders bleed out good people. Fine, I get that. I know. So I'm gonna be a good leader. You become a good leader. You do the training, you get good results, you're well respected. You think you're gonna be terrific, but yet you, you still have a lot of turnover on your team. Why is that? So we looked at the results that we have from people who said, I work for somebody I respect. Like, I work for a good leader. And what we found was that they said, If I work for a good leader, but I feel like I have no relationship with that leader, they tell us that they are just as likely to leave that good leader as if they say they are working for a bad leader.

Wow.

That, when I get on stage and I give a keynote and I talk about this, does not matter if I'm talking to multi-level, you know, network marketing. Doesn't matter if I'm talking to people in AI, healthcare executives, franchisees, it doesn't matter. The audience says exactly what you say. Wow. Because we think as long as I'm a good leader, everything's gonna be fine. But it turns out that it really isn't just about the work we do. It's about the relationships that they're building with the, the team that we have about what actually drives them to be engaged and interested in their work.

How do you do that? I just walked out of an all-hands meeting. I've been having one-on-ones with frontline employees, and it was really driven by our brand presidents. And they said, hey, I want you to meet with the people on my team. And I'm like, okay, there's going to be an agenda. They walk in the door, they say, this is what I'm doing now. I wanted to thank you for being here. But they don't really walk in with an agenda. They just want to spend some time. And I'm like, wow, this is great. And then I can ask them questions and test things that I've heard or assumptions that I've had, ask them how they're doing, talk about their families, see what, what they're thinking about things. But it wasn't driven by me. Yes, it was driven by other people putting the people on my calendar, which is obviously a shortcoming. In my leadership. How do you do it when you have a big— I mean, some leaders have 1,000 people in their company. How do they do it?

There's two ways to do it. The first way is to recognize that your people don't care about what you care about necessarily, right? Like, every leader has gone in and done their all-hands state of the union meeting where they talk about all the exciting things coming down the pike for the industry, for the company, right? And every leader has walked out of that meeting feeling like, Why was that not as exciting as I thought it was gonna be? Like, why was, why did it feel like I was the only one giving energy to the room? Why did it seem like everyone—

It was a smattering of applause. It was a smattering.

And everyone's eyes are glazed over. And the first time that happened to me with my company, I called my business coach afterwards and I was like, I don't understand. Like, I hit all my marks and I got the laugh lines and it was engaging. And I like, I practiced it left, right, and center. And he was like, yeah, they don't care. You're talking about all the amazing things all the things that are gonna happen for the company, and all they're thinking is, what does this mean for me? What does this mean for my job? What does this mean for my earnings? What does this mean for the, the amount of control that I have every single day? What does this mean for me? And too few leaders make the connection from, here's all the exciting things that are happening, and now here's where you come into play. Here's where we need you. Here's why you are important. Here's where you will influence what we're going to do. So, the first thing is to, is to understand that, that the people on your team don't— they're not excited by the same things that excite you, nor should they be, right? They're being rewarded in different ways. The second thing is that it is your job to understand what does excite them. So when I was in executive search, we used to listen for like 8 motivating factors that would get anybody excited at any time to take a new job. And they're things like, what's the mission of the organization? Am I inspired by the leader? How deep is the impact that I can make? How broad are the skills that I'm going to to learn. How prestigious will this look on my resume? Where's the job located, right? So what's my commute going to be like? What are the benefits? How much money will I make? Well, I can tell you that based on now 6 years of data, right, going back, as I said, from January 2019, of these 8 motivating factors, 38% of people, I think it's like something like 37.6% of people say that money is the most important factor. So only about a third of people say money is the number one factor that determines their daily happiness. So for the other two-thirds of the workforce, it's something else. And it's your job as a leader to understand that. Now, what I understand and what I talk about in Limitless is that it comes down to four things. It comes down to calling, right? What is the gravitational force that gets me out of bed every single morning? Do I wanna solve a societal ill? Do I wanna build a business? Do I, am I inspired by the mission? Am I inspired by the leader? Is this part of me being part part of something bigger. Number 1, connection. Is anybody gonna notice if I don't show up for work tomorrow, right? Does my work actually matter? When I look at my email box and my list of to-dos and my calendar, are these things that matter to me or are these things that matter to somebody else? Like, now that I've talked about my calling, is the work I'm doing actually connected to getting me closer to that calling? Number 3, contribution. So if connection's all about, The work contribution's really all about you. How does this work contribute to the life that you wanna live, the flexibility that you wanna have, the family that you wanna grow, the values you wanna manifest on a daily basis? And then lastly is control. How much do you have control, personal agency over the projects by to which you're assigned, the metrics by which you're measured, the amount of money that you can earn from your hustle? Do you actually have control? And what I can tell you is that since January of 2019, Calling, connection, contribution, they've maybe changed up or down like 2 to 3%. Control, 20% higher. People want more control of their own life. They want that autonomy. They want that independence. They wanna feel like they can actually have a little, because the world is chaotic right now. And people don't, people want less chaos in any way they can have it. And so being able to give your, your people, the feeling of control is important. So if you understand what drives them, how much calling, connection, contribution they want, and then how much they can actually control getting those things, then you can actually speak their language. Because instead of just being like, oh, Jeff is unhappy, let me just throw more money at him again, right? When am I not gonna be able to afford him? He's becoming toxic. He's my right, like you become a problem. You can actually see what they care about. So maybe Jeff cares more about manifesting his values on a daily basis. So maybe you don't have to give him promotion after promotion after promotion, but maybe if your company is doing a corporate giveback, you ask him to chair that committee and then suddenly he's like, wow, this is amazing. I can live my values at work. And then suddenly he's engaged and he's happy again.

You know, I read Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh and he's got his perceived control, perceived progress, connectedness, and pursuit of a worthy ideal inside of that. I use that in my training and you've already, by the way, and I want to get back to this regression analysis thing because you've already You are— the things we've talked about are in my keynotes and also in my training that I deliver to our franchise owners on who they need to be, how they show up, and building their team in the first 2 hours of training that I do. So regression analysis, you will do things differently working from the future backwards than you will by step— taking one step and putting it in front of the other. And business owners don't naturally— they do that. They say, okay, I've done this, what do I do? What do I need to do next? And then what do I need to do next? And we have to train first-time business owners to begin with the end in mind and then to work backwards from those steps. This is one of the greatest things. I just built a tool for a mastermind I'm leading this weekend. And it's, you know, it's basically the— gosh, what did I call it? It's the hidden strategy finder. Okay. So if, and the statement is, if I wasn't doing it today and I was going to start doing the same thing again, would I do it the same way as I'm doing it today or would I do it differently? Right. So, because we, we, we get into this path of doing things the same way over and over and over again. But if you said, this is the outcome and now I'm going to work backwards from that outcome and figure out how to do it in a way that would make sense in today's world. Then you come up with a different set. You realize I'm doing all these stupid things because we've always done them.

Mm-hmm.

So, you know, this concept of constant regression analysis. Now the, the, you know, and, and another thing I've learned in business is the better things are going, the farther out on the horizon you can look and the more you can kind of work your way backwards from there. But when things are kind of like not going well, you need to bring your gaze right in here and just focus on the, on the thing. So. Did you use regression analysis intentionally anyway in your work, or was it just saying, using the data that we found in these 10,000 records, we, this is what we've extrapolated?

I mean, to be totally frank, it was because I had a moment where everything was going wrong and I had to look very close. Yeah. The, the, I, I make my living flying on planes to events to give keynote speeches, and in COVID there were no there were no flights, there were no events, and there were no keynote speeches. So I was like, I wonder what I could do. And what I could do is I could teach myself how to do math, essentially. So I opened up Excel. I had found, you know, all of these results that I had from, from this. I had millions and millions of bits of data. And I was like, I wonder what I could— wonder what I could find out. So I taught myself how to do multilevel regression analysis during COVID because I'm a, I'm a super nerd. But, you know, I— to go back to what you were Saying, you know, I'm sure you're familiar with commander's intent. The, the, so for your listeners who, who, who may not know, so there's this, there's this idea in the military called commander's intent. And if the commander's intent is we are going to take the beach, right? Omaha Beach, we're gonna take the beach. And you get there and as soon as you pull up with your boats, your commander gets shot and you're like, okay, well what do we do now? The commander's not here anymore. Well, there's people shooting at us from, you know, inside of the trees. I don't know how we're gonna do it, but I know the intent is take the beach and we can't do it the way we wanna do it. So let's figure out something else, right? The paratroopers come in and you take the beach that way. So the idea that you set the goal and once you start getting in the fray, all hell breaks loose, but you still know what the goal is. And if you set the goal from where you sit today and then you take one step and all hell breaks loose, well, you don't do anything unless you've already put that goal out on the horizon. So That's the first piece. I think the second piece is, and you know, when I, when I wrote Wonderhell, I interviewed 100 different glass ceiling shatterers, Olympic medalists, startup unicorns, thinkers, creatives, philanthropists, everyday people like you and I. And I was very interested in understanding how in this moment where they've achieved something amazing and they saw a vision of themselves that they didn't even know was possible last week, last month, last year, they kept pushing into the discomfort and the unknown and discovered an even bigger version of themselves. I was interested in how people broke through. And one of the things that people told me is that they never really set a finite destination. They just set an intention. They set a direction that it was always, I wanna keep growing, I wanna keep learning. And I had a conversation with Jack Lew, who is the former Secretary of the Treasury under Obama. And I happen to know him back when he and I worked together in Bill Clinton's White House. And he said that at every step of his career, he just tried to increase his optionality. So his career is a very interesting story. He was working for Tip O'Neill, Speaker of the House. And when Tip retired, he went back to a law firm in New York City. He got on the partner track, and he was— Jack was on the partner track, and he was going to just work in law. And then he got a phone call from this guy, Eli Siegel, who ran the 1992 Clinton campaign. And Eli said, I'd love for you to come to DC and help write the legislation for the National Service Program, which became AmeriCorps. AmeriCorps. 2 million people have served in AmeriCorps. It was a phenomenal bipartisan success. But at the time, all of Jack's friends were like, what are you, crazy? You're going to go to DC for this tiny little program that might not even get passed, that isn't going to be a big deal. Why would you do it? And Jack said, I just believe in the person who's running it, and I feel like I'll be in good hands with him. So Jack comes, and he writes the legislation. The legislation gets passed. Through the process of that, he gets introduced to Bill and Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton goes on to become Secretary of State for for Obama. Jack becomes the head of the Office of Management and Budget Administration— the Office of Management and Budget Administration, becomes chief of staff for Hillary Clinton at the State Department, and eventually gets appointed Secretary of the Treasury under Obama. Now, he never set out in the beginning to become a cabinet secretary, but he said, well, I don't know what all the possibility might be. So as long as each time I take a step forward, I'm increasing my optionality by doing interesting things with interesting people, interesting opportunities will arise. And so, you know, even if you're somebody who's like, I don't know what the final, like the goal is, but I don't, I also don't wanna like short shrift myself by setting the goal too low. That approach I think also helps.

When you interviewed these 100 people, was there a through line that had to do with the concept of ambition and what was their view of ambition? What was their relationship with ambition? And how was their use of ambition different than people who don't achieve as much?

For every person I interviewed, and there was a through line, and that through line was that ambition is not a dirty word. That through line was that ambition is actually the energy. It's the battery, right? It's, it was the thing. They saw ambition as an invitation rather than this limitation, right? They didn't see it as greed, as avarice, as, right, the cravenness. They didn't see it as that. They saw it as fulfilling the promise of all of the potential that they have inside of them. And to be able to switch that voice in their head from saying like, you should be ashamed of this, but to, to feel it as this invitation allowed them to live fully into it.

I'm a big Strategic Coach fan. I'm not sure if you're familiar with the organization, Dan Sullivan, uh, Babs, um, 35, 40-year-old consultancy business where they've, I think, educated over 20,000 executives, uh, over the course of their career. And I was with him at this thing called the Genius Network, and he gave a little talk about ambition. And I'm not— I'm giving him full credit. So if you're gonna— if my team's gonna cut this, make sure you include that I gave them credit for this. I'm just telling you, you know, don't— because I'm not looking— I'm not a— I'm not a content thief, right? But, um, but I— but it's so good. And, and I think— I think anybody who's a business owner should really take a look at Strategic Coach. I'm in yet. And you know, I'm still learning and curious every day, but his talk on ambition was that it's our job in life to be more ambitious every year. And at 80 years old, he's twice as ambitious as he was at 70, and he's more ambitious than he was at 55. And at 90, he's going to be more ambitious than he was at 80. Because when you're more ambitious, and I want to get back to this point of that you don't have to give everything. It's it's not an either or, but when you're more ambitious, what it does is it forces you to, to develop and double down on capabilities that you have to meet that ambition. And then as you develop those capabilities, you discover capabilities that you don't have that you might need. And so it's all— but you would have never developed. And as I looked, I look back through 4 different ambitions that I had in my life, and I realized that I never really achieved those ambitions fully. But it was the pursuit of those ambitions that got me to where I was, that got me to the next win. And it was just, it was just an incredible thing for me. And here I am, you know, 58 years old this year, looking back and just now putting the pieces together on that simple 10-minute talk that Dan did about ambition. But the other thing about it is, is that, you know, why would he say we have a responsibility to be ambitious? Well, you could say, well, I'm not going to work that hard because it's going to impact my family, or I'm not going to do this because— no, you can— everything can be integrated. And I think you have an obligation to show the people that are closest to you and most important to you the fact that you should stretch yourself and you should try for things. And does something need to come off the plate sometimes? Yes. But you know, that's maybe it's an either or in a business thing, but you, there's always room for the 4 to 5 things in your life that matter the most.

And anyway, I agree with that. And I would add that, you know, we think about ambition just in terms of business, career, the bank account, but you could be ambitious to be the best, most present father possible. You can be ambitious to be, you know, I am ambitious to be a present daughter. When my dad had emergency hip replacement, I canceled things. I flew down to Florida. Like, there's a great piece of work from like the either late '70s or early '80s that is in Harvard Business Review about the fundamental state of leadership. And I write about this in Limitless also. I had a business coach give me this exercise and he said, He said, I want you to think about who you are when you are your very best version of yourself. Like you are making it rain, you are crushing the deal. Like you are just, it is, you are just getting the standing ovation. He said, or maybe you're helping a loved one through a really difficult problem, or maybe you're like in the back room, quietly crunching the numbers to put together the amazing proposal. It could be loud, it can be quiet, it can be public, it can be private, it could be professional, it could be personal. It doesn't matter. It just has to be you. When you are the very best version of yourself. And he said, and I want you to write what that was like. I want you to talk about the clothes you were wearing, the energy you were using, the vocabulary that you were using. I want you to talk about the energy. I want you to talk about the people who were around you. And I want you to write down adjectives about who you were in that moment. He said, then I want you to paste that list on your phone, on the lock screen of, you know, if you lock screen your phone, put it on your, on your, mirror when you're brushing your teeth at night, stick it on your rearview mirror on your car. He said, I want you to look at that list 10 times a day, every single day. And eventually, the more you lean into being that person, the more that person becomes the fundamental version of you, the person who shows up, not just when everything is going wrong or not just in those moments when you have to be the best version, but you become that person all the time. And what I like about that is if you look at somebody like Serena Williams, for example, Well, Serena doesn't just get out on the court and practice the shots she missed. She spends 98% of her time practicing the shots she got right also. So she's grooving the pattern of Serena at her best, not just going out there trying to fix what was wrong. Because, you know, if you do a presentation and you get 95% of it right, and then you spend the next 3 weeks fixing the 5% that went wrong, you're gonna get some other 5% wrong because you didn't actually groove the pattern of what you got right. So we're not practicing excellence enough. We're just kind of trying to cover our ass a lot of times. And so this process, this, this, this practice of who am I when I'm at my very best and what kind of person is that? For me, I wanna be that kind of ambitious. I wanna be ambitious that I'm continuing to get better and better and better at being my best self so that each time I get to my best self, I can up the ante and become even better in some part of my life where I wanna show up as that version of myself.

If somebody wanted to create that list for themselves, would these be adjectives? I'm trying to think about what that would be. If I was thinking about myself in a situation where I was the very best, would these be adjectives? Would these be feelings that I had? Would they be outcomes? What would I put on that list?

I think it really depends on the person. So like, I mean, we, we can like, what, what, tell me about a time when you were at your very best. Is it this, this coaching that you're doing? Is it the presentation? Is it something, you know, in your business with your family? Like, let, what would one of those times be like?

The first thing that I would go to would be giving a keynote that I gave back in July, and I, they asked me to give two. So I'm like, oh, and, and, and the challenge was, think about this as a speaker. The first day was a group of people that were also going to be in the audience on the second day. So all of our little jokes and parlor tricks and stuff, you can't do them twice. Okay, so it's like, you know, because I have my stuff, right? I got my good stuff and it's good and it's fine and I can do it in my sleep and whatever. So it really stretched me to create two different talk, you know, two different cogent or cohesive or speeches. And, and it forced me to really think through my content and then add a bunch of new content, things that I've been thinking about, but I hadn't taken the time to really share and to organize. And in that time, in the second day, which was my new stuff, was better than the first day. And I just remember having, you know, when you have the room and every eye you look at is doing exactly what you're doing right now, they're nodding at you, they're writing it down. They're saying, yeah, somebody even said this was a kind of a— one of them even said amen. You know, it's like, you know, I'm getting the grunts and this and that. And, you know, all of every— the moment that you land something that's a little bit— everybody's— there's no pause between when you say it and when people laugh. I mean, it's just, you know, like there's— it's like you're— you have a string and you just— and you're there for them. You're not thinking. And it's just perfect. Like, so when I think about that, like, and I'm not a great— I'm not, you know, I speak when asked. It's— I don't do it for a living. A dozen times a year, something like that. Maybe. Probably should start charging. But, you know, it— if any of you want to schedule me, yes, I'm charging. So I am now charging. I am now charging. But, but that was a time. Yeah.

And so what I hear in that is I hear, I hear stretch, I hear creativity, I hear presence, I hear of service. Right. So there's the Like if I were to make a list of just words that I wanted to look at that reminded me of who I am, like when you are truly in service to an audience that you care about and you are being stretched to not just give them your usual, but really like go above and beyond. Like I would, those are the kinds of things that I would write down. And then, so here's an example for me. Every year I make, I select a word for the year and my word for the year when Wonderhell came out in 2023 was elevate. 'Cause I thought, you know, I launched Limitless on the Today Show. I sort of sat there like, and I had a little, you know, conversation like you have with your in-laws on the couch and it was lovely and whatever's fine. But now I've developed a relationship with Good Morning America, right? And like, I've been on Good Morning America multiple times. They know me, they like me, they're already holding the date for my book launch. How do I elevate that so I'm not just like sitting in the chair next to Robin Roberts? How do I do it? And so I called the producer and I said, said, "This is kind of crazy, but like, Wonder Hell is sort of based around an amusement park. Like, what if we like did a thing and we created like a ride or something?" So then they said, "Okay, well, why don't like, let's see." So we rented some funhouse mirrors that I sent them, and they sent the photo to me.

I saw it. It was great.

You didn't see what was originally going to be because the funhouse mirrors were like 5 feet tall, and I'm 5'5", but Robin is like 6 foot, right? And she wears these 4-inch heels. So she's like a glamazon. She's incredible. And the producer showed me the pictures, and she's like, I just don't know if it's good enough. And I said, I don't know if it's good enough either. Maybe we should scrap it. Maybe we should build something. And then we had a conversation with the props people, and I said, how can we elevate this? And they built an entire set. I mean, I'm telling you, I've been on GMA a lot of times. I don't get nervous at all. I walked into that studio that day, and my armpits started sweating. I was just like, oh my God, oh my God, because it was so elevated. But I pushed myself that year. Like, if I'm going to launch it, how do I launch it on the biggest, you know, morning television show? If I'm gonna do it, how do I launch it with the biggest morning television host? If I'm gonna do that, how do I make the set memorable, right? So I just, every single thing I did that year, I thought I am at my best when I have elevated the experience and I have to live up to what I have just like, I've written a check that I now like, my mouth's gotta cash, right? Like I've gotta show up as the person I promised I'd be. And so if you have a list of, I am, when I'm, I am as creative and present as I can be to be of, to be in service to the people I care about, you will show up differently in every facet of your life.

I saw that segment. You went walking out there, you were comfortable, you crushed the set. It was a 5.5-minute segment or something like that.

Which is like 1,000 years in TV time. Yeah.

Yeah. And I was, I was like, they built an entire set. The, 'cause the backdrop was the amusement park. You had the, the mirror that made you small on the left, the mirror that made you big on the right.

We had choreography. Yeah.

And she's playing the mirror. I mean, Rob— Robin's playing the game. She's like, what about this one? What about that one? And you just— and then you had your talking points and you had your, your, um, your analysis, you know, and you just— you, you landed probably in the, the biggest points in the book, right? Which, if I'm listening to that, I'm buying the book right now. I'm going right now to buy the book. And yeah, I, I, I'm glad you shared that because I couldn't figure out, like, how did you make that happen?

Well, so, and I'll tell you a little, uh, backstory. The first time I was on on GMA, was not with her, was supposed to be with her. The reason I got on GMA the first time is 'cause she saw me speak and then liked my book and tweeted about my book and handed it to her producer and was like, "Book her." Meanwhile, the producer had already turned me down, like when I tried to get on the show earlier. So I got on the show, but then she got called away for work, so for, to cover a story. So I ended up being on with somebody else. And by the time I got on with her, she was so effusive because she now follows me on social media, which is bananas. And the cameras start rolling And she's like, "I'm so glad you're here. I feel like you're my friend. I follow you on social media and it's great." And I'm like, "There's 4 million people watching this live. Like, what do I say?" And she's so wonderful and kind and warm. It's like a beam of light comes out of her body when she talks to you. She's just like the person you see on TV is who she is backstage. It's the most incr— I've never met anybody like her. It's the most incredible thing. The first time I was on with her, the producer said, "Okay, now remember," It's live national TV. There are 4 million people watching. It is 4 minutes, not 3:55, not 4:05. It has to be 4 minutes to land it for the commercials. And Robin's gonna Robin. And I was like, "Ooh." And then she pushes me out on set, and I was like, "What do you mean Robin's gonna Robin?" And then I get out there, and Robin just goes off script from the start immediately, and she just takes you wherever she wants to take you. So you have to be like, there and in the moment. And when I was there for the Wonderhell launch, we start filming, like they turn on the cameras, we're live, and she goes, "Laura, you know I love you." And at the end, I blacked out during the whole 4 minutes. And I come off, and my younger son who I brought with me was like 18 years old at the time. And I said, "I think Robin said she loved me." And my son was like, "Yeah, she did." And I said, "And I think she said she loved my writing." And he said, "Yeah." And I said, and I think I said, "I love you too." And he goes, "Yeah, you did." So, you know, again, I can be great because they're so great. So as long as I'm like, how do I elevate this experience? Then I know that it will keep carrying me to be that person who lives into that level, which is, you know, I think we should always challenge ourselves to be in this place where we're just like 9 toes over the edge of incompetence. Right? Like we're almost there and we're pushing ourselves and like we have to, it forces us to show up for real. 'Cause if we don't, we're gonna get, you know, smacked in the face. So like you just continuing to be ambitious in that way, I think is the best way to do it.

So it's interesting. When were you using speaking to build a business? And then when did the speaking become the business?

So I never planned to become a speaker, interestingly enough.

I, I hear that a lot, by the way. I mean, it's like I was speaking to build this business and And then somebody said, I'll pay you 15 grand or 20 grand or whatever. And it's like, oh, I'm a speaker now.

Yeah. So I sold my executive search firm to the women who helped me build it. And I was raising money for Hillary Clinton. I was trying to get her elected. She'd asked me to become head of presidential personnel in her White House. So I was gonna run, you know, all of personnel. And I was like, great, fine. And I did not wanna speak in public. I'd never spoken in public. Speaking in public is terrifying. I didn't wanna do it, but I was feeling, I was having this sort of crisis of identity where I didn't know who I was when I was no longer like LGO CEO, here's my business card. So I just started blogging about things. And one of those blog posts got seen by somebody who runs TEDxCambridge. She asked me to do a talk. To do a TEDx talk. And I again was like, no way, I don't wanna do that. Speaking in public's terrifying. My kids were in the backseat and they dared me to do it cuz they were like, mom, don't you tell us we have to do things that scare us? And I was like, great. Like, you didn't hear me tell you to pick up your socks, but like that, that you clocked. Okay. So 6 weeks later I'm on stage and I, and I'm giving this 11 and a half minute impassioned plea that, by the way, I can't even look back and look at now. Like I've given a second TEDx since that's gotten like 3 million views and I'm proud of it and it's great. But this first one, I'm like, I am a TEDx talker, right? It's just awful. Like, I was like a robot. It was terrible. But again, I said something kind of clever and somebody stage left laughed. And then I said something kind of deep and somebody stage right gave me that "aw, man" moment. And I was like, "Oh, interesting." And by the time the 11 and a half minutes were over and I got the applause, I was like, "I want more of this." It was like an immediate jolt to my ego. Fast forward a few weeks, that talk got a little bit of attention and I got offered $1,500 to fly to Boise, Idaho to give a 45-minute version of that talk. And I gave that 45-minute talk, like clinging to the podium. Like if I let go of it, I would fly off into space. Like I was so scared out of my mind, but then I finished and I walked off stage and they handed me a check and I was like, wait a minute, all I gotta do is talk and you give me money? Like, tell me more about this job. So I got involved in a number of like public speaking training, 'cause I feel like if you're gonna do it, you really you really should know how to do it, right? Like, you should be able to deliver. You should know that what you're talking about is right, first and foremost. Like, you're not just giving reports on other people's ideas, but like, you've lived it, you've learned it, you've studied it. So, it should be right, and it should be presented in a way that's compelling and memorable. So, I started doing that, and I started getting offers to speak for more, and then they were like $10,000 and $15,000 and $20,000 and $30,000, right? So, like, I was starting to get paid more and more. And then eventually, the numbers just work, and you're like, well, this is the fastest and easiest way for me to make money. So I'm just gonna do this. And at the same time, you start to notice that the people who are getting paid quote unquote real money have books. So you're like, well, I should probably write one of those. What do I know about? So you're like, so it all kind of snowballs together. And then if you're like me and you're a super nerd who is absolutely just hellbent on making sure you're right, you decide when you're 54 years old to go back to school and get a doctorate. So I've recently started doing that.

Oh, congratulations.

Thank you. Thank you. But, you know, I just, I think there are a lot of people, there are a lot of speakers, and I'm sure your listeners know this, who have, you've gone to an event and you've listened to a speaker and what they've told you is interesting, but is it true? Right? Like, there's a big difference between interesting and rigorous. And I'm doing the doctor because I want to make sure I'm rigorous, even though I know that it's right. I know it's right from 30 years of a lifetime, like of my work experience, but I'm not entirely always sure why it's right. And so with the doctorate, I'm sort of interested in exploring that piece of it.

What year was that when you gave that first talk?

2016.

2016. Okay. So you've come a long way since.

Almost been 10 years. Yeah.

Yeah. That's, that's amazing. I don't go back and look at my stuff.

It's the most painful thing ever, but it's really important.

And, you know, and as, and as a football player, like, and a football coach, you Gotta watch tape. All we did was watch film, and I watched tons and tons and tons of film. I probably watched more coaching than I did, you know, because it wasn't me, but, you know, I watched more coaching than I did when I was playing. But I haven't— I hired a speaking coach one time, and they came in and they said, you know, memorize this talk and do this and do that and hold your hands like this. We did all that. They were a very renowned speaker coach at a long-standing practice in Charlotte. And that was the only speech I ever bombed. Like I bombed it.

And wait, and wait, wait, let's go back to your, to the adjectives, right? You weren't stretching yourself in service of your audience. You were performing in service of your own fear of messing up. Totally different situation, right? So that's why who you are at your best is so important to remember because we're not trying to avoid who we are at our worst. We're trying to live into the person we know we can be.

You're exactly right. And the that. So I've developed since that point in time, I said I'm never going to memorize a speech, I'm never going to have 8 pages of notes. So I developed what's called a message organizer, and it's a tool that I have. And basically, if you look right here, if you're on YouTube, it's just blocks on a piece of paper. And I will have a main topic, and I will have 3 bullet points, and I will go run around in that square as long as I want to, and I will tie in things there. And then when I'm done, I'll move to the thing. And that way I'm just gonna talk. Now, are you gonna get the likes? Are you gonna get the ums? Are you gonna get the filler words? Yeah, sure. I'm not, I'm, I mean, I'm not Laura here. I mean, I'm, I'm just a guy, right? Doing a thing. But, but at the end of the day, it's the more that I work, it's like Jerry Seinfeld said, he goes, I have to work. So if I don't work, so, so what I do get to do is I, I get to do training. I get to do podcasts. We do, we did 4 podcasts this week. So this is kind of of like, you know, performing a little, speaking a little bit. Then we get to do the training, then I get to go out and speak, and then I get to do panels and all this stuff. And in doing all of that, as long as I know what the topic I wanna talk about, I have a command of it, and then I have 3 or 4 different trigger bullet points, I'm good. And I can, I can go out and do it. But if I wanted to go to the next level, what would you say? Do I need to record myself and then watch myself?

As much as I hate to say it, the best way to get better is watching tape of yourself. It is the most painful process ever. And also, you will get better so much faster. Now, I have a speaking coach. His name is Mike Ganino. He's incredible. I will never bring a keynote to a stage without running it through him. He is one of the best. He considers himself a keynote director rather than a speaking coach. He sort of creates what is the whole experience going to be like. And his background's in improv, and so he's never going to say, like, you need to memorize this speech and memorize that. But it's mostly like, what is the arc of your speech? What are the main money lines that you want to make sure you hit? What are the stories that you tell? And you can sort of pull different stories at different times. And what are the transitions? And I think the transitions in between the boxes that you have are the important things to understand. I had a, I had a, that first, that original TEDx that I, that I did, they gave us a coach for that. And she very much had us like memorize the talk, right? Like, because a TED Talk is different. Like a keynote or a panel, you're sort of storytelling and you're, you're open and it's, it's very emotional. But a TEDx is like, it has to be educational from the start. So it just has this very different feel. But she said something, she taught me something very early on, which is that if you're ever on stage stage and you're like, what was I saying? Where was I going? What was I doing? Oh no. Just say, and why am I telling you this story? I'm telling you the story because I want you to know blah, blah, blah. And that brings you right back into why you're there, which helps you get to the next. So if you just know, like, I'm gonna, I'm gonna spend time in this box and I'm gonna play around here for a little while till I get to the next box. You just have to know how to get from one box to the next. Your, your audience never knows what you're not saying. They don't know that you've got 6 boxes. They might think you have 3. 3, it doesn't matter. So just knowing how to get from one to the other, I think, is the best way to become seamless and smooth. Though I do wanna say one thing about that. There is science that shows that people who say, um, and like when they're speaking, not excessively, but who have some filler words, they actually sound smarter and more authentic to their audience, cuz they don't sound like they're just giving this rehearsed, just pull it out of a can, super polished they sound like they're actually in it with you in the moment and they're telling you the story maybe for the first time because they think that you're gonna like the story. So I wouldn't worry. Don't get yourself hung up on the filler words and the ums and the likes. Just know how to craft a seamless experience, even if your sentences themselves aren't seamless.

When I'm in it, I do not use those words. And when I'm really focused on having good performance value, value and it's clean. What are your, I have a question about the TED Talk. Is there a cheater screen? Because to me it looks like the words in the TED Talk are so particular that I would think that there would be a screen. Are you not allowed to say?

There is not a, there, there's a confidence monitor that gives you the time, but there is not a teleprompter or you're, you don't get your script. And what's funny is that when I gave that first TEDx Cambridge, one of the other speakers was a local news reporter. And she didn't realize until the day before that she wasn't gonna get a teleprompter. And she was like, what? Like, what do you mean I'm not gonna have a teleprompter? Oh my God. So no, you don't have one. I didn't have one for TEDxReno either. And interestingly, you know, you talked about how big my platform is online. That TEDxReno that I did in 2023 has, I think it has almost 3 million views. And yet the TEDxCambridge that I did in 2016, despite this whole platform that I built, I think has 15,000 views. Views, and frankly, rightly so. It has probably 13,000 more views than it deserves. But I, you know, the market speaks, the market tells you. No, for a TEDx, it is a very specific memorized, you have to hit every single line and you have to do it because the length of the TEDx should be directly correlated to the message that you're giving. So when I When I sat down with the coach for TEDxReno, the one that has 3 million views, the one that's about Wonderhell, I did my first table read and it was like 17 minutes long. And the executive producer turned to me and he goes, "Lori," he goes, "Listen, I like you a lot and I really like this idea and I would love to see you give a 45 or 60-minute keynote on this. I'm sure it is wildly entertaining and fun and memorable and educational, but this is not a keynote. This is a TEDx." "this will make a terrible 17-minute TEDx. It'll be an amazing 12-minute TEDx, but it's not a 17-minute TEDx. It's either a 45-minute keynote or it is a 12-minute, here's the overview of the idea, but it does not support a 17-minute." And I was like, so offended. I was like, what do you mean? My idea's brilliant. You should give me all the time in the world. And he was like, it's not of service to your idea. Like, your idea is a 12-minute 5-minute idea that then has a book and a keynote and all the rest of that comes off of it. So you, it's, the TEDx is a very, very carefully curated and policed operation where you do not go over by even by a second. And so it is a, you have to have the whole thing memorized and you also can't move, which is hard.

I would love to get you your perspective on workforce today versus 2019 when you released Limitless and you started the assessment. And now we've been through COVID. Now we've got social media at a different, you know, every year it's at a different level. I don't know, did TikTok even exist in 2019? What, when you're speaking to audiences today, what are you talking about that you didn't talk about in 2019?

2019? Oh, let's see. I am talking about the— I'm talking about AI, obviously, that we didn't talk about that in 2019. And I'm talking about people feeling like they need to belong, that they need to be part of something that matters, that they need to feel like they matter. AI is driving a lot of fear around that. I'm talking a lot about return to office and what leaders need to be doing differently to make sure that their people feel seen and loved through their work. I'm talking about the generational shifts where the boomers are mostly retiring and we've got, you know, the Gen Z is starting to come into the workforce. And what does that look like with Gen X sort of in this, this, you know, this, this sandwich generation? Millennials now have— everyone's like, oh, the millennials are the problem. They're all playing video games in the basement with their moms. I'm like, the millennials are 45 years old and they're your leaders. They're your managers. Like, they're not kids anymore.

So they're still playing They may still be playing video games.

I'm talking about women and the— we talked about ambition not being a dirty word and women taking more of a voice in the office. So there's a lot of interesting sort of gender and generational dynamics that are changing. But mostly what I'm talking about is how everybody says, oh, well, you know, it's all the pandemic's fault that people aren't engaged in their work. And I'm like, no, actually, it turns out that people have been disengaged in their work work forever. And across what I mentioned of calling, connection, contribution, and control, calling and connection, I think I said, you know, went like 2 to 5% one way or the other, but control is really what people want more of. So, I'm talking a lot about how do we give people sometimes control and sometimes the illusion of control, right? So, they can feel like they are part of, that they They're, you know, able to control their destiny in some way. And so those are kind of generally speaking what I talk about. And then obviously within that, how do you get people to bring everything they are to work?

I hate to ask this without being sure, but you have children.

I have two children. Yes. Two boys. They're 21 and 23.

Okay. So, and not to, people oftentimes don't like to bring their family into the public thing, but what are you, what are you telling them? Now about the workforce? What are you— what trends are you seeing? How are you advising them? You know, hopefully they haven't been, you know, going to Code Ninjas for the last 12 years because that ain't working. You don't need it.

You don't need it. Yeah.

Yeah. So what, uh, what kinds of things would you, would you advise 21 and 23-year-olds today to pay attention to? Oh, I have a 24-year-old daughter and she is in law school, so she doesn't need to drop— she does not need to out. She needs to finish.

Hopefully she, hopefully she's there because she wants to be there, as opposed to me who was there because I was told by the teacher I should go.

But if she ends up as successful as you, I will be so thrilled.

Well, my dad says that now, but man, there were some dicey years there in the middle, especially because my dad is a lifelong Republican. So when I told him I was dropping out of law school to join Bill Clinton's campaign, he was upset on multiple, multiple levels.

That makes for a great Thanksgiving.

It makes for a very, a very very loud Thanksgiving. Um, what would I— what do I tell my kids? I tell them two things. I tell them, number one, the bar has never been lower. The bar's never been lower to show up and be amazing. Like, if you show up on time, if you do what you say you're gonna do, if you actually show some interest and ask questions about other people and not just talk about yourself and your own needs, you will stand out among your peers. That is a sad fact, but it is so true. Like, if you show up 10 minutes late to a meeting and you're like, "Sorry, traffic," and you've got your Starbucks in your hand, I'm not going to count on you. I'm not going to look to you if, you know, if there's some big opportunity. But if you're there and you've shown interest and you ask some questions and you dress professionally and you brush your hair and you like show up— if I'm scanning the room as I'm walking out to meet a big client and I'm like, I could bring somebody along with me, I'm gonna see you. I'm gonna say, that person That person will make me look good, right? That person is going to reflect well on our company. Like that is— being professional should not be the bar, but that is the bar. So for young people today, I tell them like the bar is super low. You could— it takes effort to slither under it. Like you should just like, just, just show a little, like just, just show a little energy. Like just, and, and it's very easy. It's very easy to do that. If you're a young person and you're listening to this and you are, and you're on your way to the office, like today at the end of the day, when your boss As someone else is leaving the office, just walk with them to the elevator and ask them what exciting things they're working on. Ask them a follow-up question about a meeting. Just show some interest. And we think like, oh, they're not gonna like it if I ask questions. I don't wanna be a pain in the ass. I don't wanna bother them. But you're not, like, you're actually showing some energy and that's exciting. So that's the first thing that I would say. The second thing that I tell them is not to be afraid of AI and not to let AI replace you and not to use AI as a cheat, but to use AI AI to augment who you are, right? To make yourself even more ambitious, to go back to what we were saying in the beginning. Because what AI can do is it can replace us in the repetitive tasks and the scalable tasks in some of the research, right? Obviously, you have to check it because it hallucinates, but it's never going to replace judgment. It's not going to replace creativity. It's not going to replace nuance. It's not going to replace intuition. It can guide us, but it's never going to be as good as us in those ways. So how do you figure out a way to let it do some of the early work so that you can shine in the ways and the things that make us uniquely human? And so to, to, to, to see AI as that companion rather than as the, as the competitor.

Slithering under the bar. That's, I, I see it. I see it. You know, you, you know, it's like locus of control. When you see it, you can't to see it. And unfortunately, man, and, and I don't know about you, but look, I'm, I'm just a big child. We're, we're just older, and I'm susceptible to getting, uh, trapped on social media and getting into a doom scroll and doing things that are unhealthy for me. It seems like I just change one addiction for another. If I, you know, I cut my drinking down to nothing, and then next thing I know I'm eating 4 pizzas, and, you know, then I, then I'm, then I'm scrolling instead of exercise. It's, it's just we're constantly battling against ourselves. But like, man, We didn't have all the choices when we were kids. It wasn't that hard. I mean, we just, we had inside and we had outside.

Mm-hmm.

That was like, you had your choice. You could either go outside and play with the football that I tied together with a shoelace, or, you know, and the big, you know, and the, the, the bat that was handed down from generations, or, you know, or you could be inside and, you know, do chores, whatever. But I, I don't envy the kids today. And, and also too, you know, the— I mean, comparison is the thief of joy, you've heard people say. I like to say that, um, that, uh, envy is the enemy of enlightenment. I mean, like, looking online, man, everything looks good, but that's just not the way it really is. I mean, and I, I, I, I just— I know that I am most fulfilled when I've done something hard and I wasn't sure I was gonna win. And you stuck it out and maybe there was some pain involved and then you get through it and it's like, man, you know, I deserve this walk, this vacation, this pizza, whatever it is. But man, it's like everybody, it's like the muffin top episode in Seinfeld. You know, the kids just want, you know, they don't realize that you gotta do the stump. They just want the top, but the top's not good without the stump.

There's a couple things that are happening. I think the first is they, they, they have been raised by a generation of parents who in some ways were helicopter parents, right? Like we, we didn't let them have, as Gen X, we were raised that we joke around, my sister and I joke around that we were raised with benign neglect, right? It was like, go outside and like run around and come back when the, like the streetlights go on. Like that was it. They didn't care. They didn't know where we were. They like, we were feral. Like that was it.

That was my older brother had to be home by dark. Every night. And then my younger brother, it was no heroin in the living room.

Exactly right. So it's the same thing. So we had the same childhood, right? So it was the same thing. And, and, and so we were feral and we decided we were gonna do it differently. And so we helicopter-parented our kids and now our kids are afraid to be uncomfortable. But I think there's a, I, I think that there's a couple things that happened. First, they, they, they didn't get the same discomfort muscle that we had. They didn't have to figure things out on their own as much as we had to figure things out on our own. And then the second thing, because of social media, they're so afraid to be embarrassed. That they don't try, they don't let themselves fail. And so my favorite Eleanor Roosevelt quote is, um, you would worry much less about what people thought about you if you realized how seldomly they did. Like nobody's thinking about you. Nobody cares. They're all so busy looking at themselves. Everyone's got their camera on selfie mode, right? Everybody's looking at themselves. Nobody's paying attention to anybody else, but we, we feel like we're living under the spotlight where everyone's looking at us. So, you know, we, they don't have to figure things out. They're afraid to fail. And then there's this third problem, which is, you know, you've heard of FOMO, right? There's now there's FOBO, like fear of a better option. Like there's always going to be, like you swipe right, there's always something else. And so what's happening in the workforce is that people are going through, like graduates are going through the interview process, they get the job, and then they don't show up on day one because along the way they found a different job. And they don't tell anybody because they're just like, there's just going to be a better option. Or if your boss asks you to do something that's hard, you don't know how to do it, and it's uncomfortable, you just quit and you go somewhere else. Yeah. There's always a better option. And so I, I like to, um, I like to remind my kids that, that there is anxiety, right? Capital A anxiety, actual mental health, brain chemistry issue. Yes. But you can also just be anxious sometimes and like, it's okay to just be anxious sometimes. Yeah. Like being anxious doesn't necessarily mean anxiety. There are two separate things. And obviously if you have anxiety, see a professional, deal deal with it, that's great. Therapy's amazing. We should all get assigned a therapist at birth. But you can be anxious, you can be uncomfortable, you can be, you could be depressed without having depression, right? Like we can have this whole range. Susan, Susan, what's her last name? Oh my gosh, I forgot her last name. Who wrote Emotional Agility, not Susan Cain, Susan David. Susan David wrote this great book, Emotional Agility, that I would recommend to any parent ever. Because if your kid comes to you and they're like, I'm mad. And it's Well, are you mad or are you frustrated? Are you envious? Are you jealous? Are you just tired? Like, there's so, like, we have individual emotion labels, but underneath those labels, there's so many other things. And Susan David's book is so great at helping to show you all of the different ways we can experience emotions and respond to them. And I think teaching, like, if I'm talking to my kids, I'm talking to them about emotional agility. Ability and staying longer in that discomfort, getting comfortable being uncomfortable so that it, it gets easier every time. 'Cause I, I do think discomfort is a muscle that we've kind of atrophied a bit.

It's not only okay, it's expected and necessary.

It's necessary.

Absolutely. It's necessary. You, you have to be depressed sometimes and it's disappointed. I mean, all like it's, that's being alive.

How else do you understand what you like? Like everyone's like, follow your passion. And I'm like, follow your passion's terrible advice. Yeah. Like follow your passion says you find your passion and you follow it and everything's gonna be amazing. But then the first time somebody says no, the first time it gets hard, the first time a client rejects you, the first time your worst employee, you know, stays, but your best one leaves, you're like, oh, this must not be my passion. I should do something else. But like, it's not do what you would do if you knew you couldn't fail. It's like, do what you would do if you knew for sure you would fail and that you wanna do it over and over and over until you get it right. That's your passion, right? Like, you can't, you can't do your passion well if you don't do your passion poorly for a while first. So yeah, it's necessary. We have to do it.

Yeah, quitting is the worst habit, and you have to succeed in the opportunity that you're in at some level to win the next opportunity. Even if you, let's say you're in the wrong job, wrong place, wrong company, wrong boss, wrong market, nothing's working for the company. It's certainly not working for you. Work it to a stalemate. You know, just like, just don't let that, that last shoulder get pinned down on the mat. Like work, like work your, you know, flip it around, fight through it, be the last one standing, get back up on your feet, stare it in the eye and say, I'm going somewhere else.

Okay. And what I, what I tell people is like, like, look, okay, this sucks. You've got no future here. It's not gonna work. Fine. We've accepted that. While you're still there working it to a stalemate, what can you learn from it? How can you grow from it? What relationship can you pull out of it? Like, what are the things like in, in, in everything bad, there's some nuggets we can pull out of it, right? To go back to the Jack Lew example, how do you increase your optionality? Like there's always options. There's never a final option. Like the final option is death, right? So in between here and death, there, there are a lot things that we can do. There's a lot of ways we can learn, we can grow. Maybe you're in the worst job ever, but it's a great logo. How do you make phone calls from this is Joe Schmo from Great Logo USA to get your foot in the door somewhere else? Like, how do you— while, while you're dying on the vine, like, how do you use what's left?

What do you learn in crisis? Everything faster and deeper.

Yes.

Because it sticks. Like, that's, you know, it sticks. And that's, um, man, so much of this is, was what I, what I try to educate our franchise owners on as they start their businesses. Laura, you mentioned franchising. It's, you've said, when I speak to franchise people, can you just tell me a little bit about your exposure to franchising and any view or perspective you have on it, or what have you done?

Yeah.

I mean, I can't talk to audiences maybe. I don't know.

Yeah. I mean, when I, well, I can't talk to obviously particular, I'm not gonna name drop the clients, but franchisees are an interesting group of people because I mean, I love that you're, I love that you're the name of your podcast I guess is unemployable because I, when I sold my, my search firm, I got an offer to, it was a very fancy offer with a very fancy consulting firm to do a very fancy job. And I told my husband about it and I wasn't looking for it, but this guy called me outta the blue and I told my husband and he was like, I don't think you're employable anymore. Like you haven't had a boss for 20 years. And I was like, I don't think I'm employable either. And my friend Scott Stratton, who's an author and a speaker out of Canada, he's like, well, you know, unemployable is— he said consultant is unemployable for— or is Latin for unemployable. And I thought that that was pretty funny. So franchisees are people who have made a decision that they are going to be counterculture, that they're going to be iconoclastic, that they are going to do things differently, that they have a— they know that there's a way that the world should be, and they have all of this entrepreneurial energy, but they maybe have a little too much either risk aversion, or they've just got a lot of, you know, people who rely on them, who count on them, and they can't just like drop everything and just jump off, you know, jump out of the airplane. So, they want a pre-sewn parachute. They're excited and they wanna go and they're ready to do it, but they just wanna make sure that there's some structure and some control. And so, the conversations I have with franchisees are how do you, within, it's almost like Montessori, right? You have this incredible amount of freedom within very specific constraints. And then how do you maximize all of the benefits that you bring, all of the skills, all of gifts that you bring so that you're maximizing everything that that sandbox has to offer. You know, some people, you know, if you go back to Wonder House, some people want to go on the roller coaster first. Some people want to go on the merry-go-round first. Some people want to go to the, you know, the arcade first. But everybody wants to have all— everyone wants to do everything. It's just a matter of figuring out what's the right path for you in that this point in your leadership, at this point in your evolution, at this point in your knowledge. And So, the talks that I give with franchisee owners is to really help them find what parts of this excite them the most. And then what parts are, to go back to the first question you asked me, are they holding themselves back with some preconceived notion, with some definition, with some label that somebody else gave them somewhere along the way, whether there's somebody saying like, oh, you can't do that. That's too scary. Scary, when what they really mean is, I can't do that, I'm too scared. Or somebody saying like, oh, I don't know, are you sure you're not going to get hurt? And it's coming from somebody who loves them, but who doesn't really know them and what their capability is. So, I find with franchisees, they're an interesting group because a lot of them are often like first-generation business owners, right? They don't have a ton of role models of people who are excited for them and who believe in it, but who are just sort of like kind of standing off to the side like, I'm I love that for you. But they're not entirely sure if they're going to be successful. They don't want to quite get in there. And so really helping them see themselves in the full-throated bravery that they can be marching into the unknown, knowing that they are covered and protected by the structure that the franchise offers them.

Yeah, it's all of the things that get into their heads from their financial advisors, from their father-in-law, from, from life, from the risks, uh, from the responsibilities that they have. And they need to be able to talk that down.

And when they do, the excitement and the potential is so huge.

Yeah.

And that momentum carries them to be more ambitious about everything. If they can quiet the rest of that noise.

And they have to because it's hard. Like we don't tell people, oh, come in, it's a lock. No, you can fail. You can fail. Like if you don't show up and you pretend that you don't have to do all these things and now you're the boss and you're just gonna think it's, it's gonna happen. Like it won't work for you. Like there are things you have to do, uh, but they're all doable. And you know, you can't argue, you know, I love this quote. It says, if you argue for your limitations and you win the argument, you get to keep 'em for the rest of your life.

Mm-hmm. That's a great quote.

I love it. I don't know where it's from, but stolen.

Yeah. I ask, I ask my, uh, I ask my executive coaching clients all the time. I'm like, it seems like you have a, a, a list of preconceived definitions of your ability and, and, and your potential. How hard do you wanna fight to keep those? And they sort of look at me like, what do you mean? I'm like, cuz it seems like you've been fighting pretty hard up until this point. Right? Like we just, because, Yeah. Nobody come, nobody comes out of, comes outta middle school unscathed, right? Like we all, like you at a certain point, like somebody has said to you, you are so X, right? And it's just, and whether it's a parent, a teacher, a boss, like it doesn't matter. Like somebody has told you, somebody has handed you a limitation.

Yeah. They said, take that ACDT t-shirt off. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Take it off.

Yep. Yeah. You have to be more this, you can't be as much that you have to be. Right. And then we get stuck in this place where we spend a lot of our lives. So I said everyone should be assigned a therapist at birth, right? Because we spend a lot of our lives trying to fight against this, this, this giant suitcase that we were handed at some point that doesn't even belong to us. You can't be insatiably hungry for someone else's goals. And we are all walking around with a suitcase of other people's goals. People's goals.

Laura, this has been amazing. I've really enjoyed this. Are we still recording? Are we— did we hit the button? I hope we did.

It says record on my side.

Ah, this has been great. Uh, but it is time. I— we do need to nudge gently on the reins and turn this, this, uh, towards the barn. And, uh, but if you're willing to play, I've got a curveball and a fastball for you.

Okay.

Before we do, how can people get in touch with you?

And so my name is Laura Gassner Otting. That's a lot of names. So all my friends call me LGO, and I am all the socials at Hey LGO, like, hey, LGO. So, Hey LGO and LauraGassnerAuditing.com.

Got it. LauraGassnerAuditing.com. We'll put it in the show notes. Hey LGO everywhere that you look and you death scroll and all of the things, you are there. So, like, follow, subscribe, all of the things. So, here's the curveball.

Okay.

Gun to your head. Sorry. About that. Um, you have to create a new business in the next 30 days. It can't be something that you're currently in. Where do you see the opportunity in the marketplace?

Well, that's a great question. Um, I see opportunity in the marketplace in I would, let's see. Well, I'm, I am a menopausal woman who is going through HRT, who is trying desperately to try to get enough protein into my body. And so I think, I think that the, there's a lot going on in, in, in protein right now, but I think specifically women have never been paid as much attention to in medicine as they are today. My physician just went last year to the very first ever conference on menopause menopause, specifically only menopause. And so women in middle age have a huge amount of spending power and are finally at the point where they have gone through what my mom called the FU 40s, and they're just like, screw the rest of you, I'm doing for myself now. So I do, I think that women's menopausal marketplace is a, is a, is a big marketplace.

Yeah, I heard about that conference. They had a problem with controlling the temperature in the room. Is it hot in here?

It's, it's definitely not me.

It's not me. Sorry about that. We'll cut that out.

No, that was hilarious.

All right, here we go. Last question. Um, straight down the middle, fastball. If you had one sentence to make an impact in somebody's life, what would that be?

I would, I would say, it's funny 'cause Gary Vee always says, you're gonna die, right? Like that's his one sentence, you're gonna die. I would, I would tell them to think about who they were at their very best moment and ask them what that moment felt like and what it meant to them. And I find that when you remind people of who they are at their very best and you see it and you reflect it back on them in ways that they believe that you actually see it in them too, they can't unsee it and they can borrow your confidence until they have their own.

Beautifully said. Laura, thanks for being on today.

Thank you so much. This has been great, Jeff.

Yeah, I've had a good time. This is Jeff Dutton with the incredible Laura Gassner Otting on The Unemployable Podcast. Thanks for listening.