90: Inside the Mindset, Systems and Strategies of charity: water's Chief Operating Officer Lauren Letta

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Hello everybody. Welcome back to the Pivot Podcast. I am super excited to have Lauren Letta with us here today who is the Chief Operating Officer at Water. If you don't already know, Charity, Water is an awesome nonprofit bringing clean and safe drinking water to people in developing countries. What makes them different is their radically transparent model that sends 100% of public donations straight to the field and Lauren has been overseeing their day to day operations now for since 2009 when she started as a consultant. She's responsible for bringing the company culture and ecosystem into one that promotes growth and learning. And she was drawn in in the first place by Water's creative startup like approach to solving a humanitarian crisis. Prior to joining water, Lauren worked in fashion and events, managing global campaigns for brands like Warner Brothers, Saks Fifth Avenue and Swarovski Swarf. That always word always gets me. You say it.

It's a tricky one. Swarovski.

Swarovski. You know what's funny? I even practiced before we started hitting record and I like nailed it on my own. But then when you have to say it while we're live, I still can't. Maybe by the end of this interview I'll be able to say it properly.

I feel that way about Cinnamon, so.

Well, you nailed it, Cinnamon.

Not just that, but now spelling with autocorrect, it's like almost impossible. My spelling abilities have atrophied greatly.

Yeah, I had that experience last week in writing a note.

Yeah. Lauren, I was so excited to bring you on the show because I've been familiar with Water for a long time. But when I saw your role as chief operations officer, this is like one of my sliding doors careers that if I wasn't an author and a speaker, I feel like I would love to be a COO somewhere. And I'm just fascinated by your role and what you do, but most of all how you think. So I would love to just dive in there and hear a little bit about what your role entails and what are your ninja skills that make you great at it.

I love that.

Thank you. Super excited to be chatting today. And I love the ninja skills.

Description. I think we actually, we were thinking about what my role should be. At one point in my time here. We're going to call me Chief Ninja. Oh, really? Perfect. Whatever that means. I love the idea of the COO too. I think the reason I love the coo, especially in today's working environment that we're in, is that it doesn't mean anything descriptive. It's really about the organization. So it allows for this curation of what's most important right now and how can you kind of see what's as far in the future you can see to determine how you focus your time and organize the organization.

Around those opportunities. And I think my time here at water and even potentially before has allowed me to really reinvent what it means. So my title, I often think that like the title is, you know, you can call yourself whatever you want, but what are you, what are you having the opportunity to do at that particular Time given where the organization or company you're in is at and where the environment you're working in is going. So COO at WATER has been a long evolution. I've been in this role here for the last three years and it's evolved from being what you would think of and maybe a COO in terms of the day to day operations and how does work get done and the kind of structure and design of the organization. But I actually have the great privilege of also working really on our external facing side of our organization. So most of my effort today is actually on our marketing and branding side. So kind of bringing in the heart and soul of the organization and how we show and tell that out to our supporters through our website and our storytelling and our content creation is where I actually get to focus a lot of my time.

Now, this sounds like a huge role. I mean, you had a great nugget in there organizing the organization, which is so interesting. And then as you just said, it also includes these external facing components. How do you even begin to wrap your mind around organizing an organization like water?

Hmm, that's a great question. You know, I think for me, as I think back at my time here and how my role has, how I've been kind of lucky enough to evolve my role into what it is today, which is this hybrid of internal and external. I mean, I think at the heart of it, you think about a lot of the good companies and organizations that we love and look up to. You want to see the inside on the outside from a branding perspective. How do you show the world who the organization is by first focusing on the internal team and culture? I think my role here at water, when I first started, it started in this hybrid makeup of internal operations and the organization of the organization, as we're now calling it, as well as looking out, because those two things are so directly tied together. And so when I started, you know, back in 2009 as a consultant, the organization was small. We had 15 people. And, you know, I think there's something really amazing about being a generalist and an operator in a small startup organization, whether it be a nonprofit or a tech company or a fashion company or whatever it is. You are allowed to wear a lot of hats and you have that privilege. And so for me, my role started as a hybrid because it was partially how do we make the organization more efficient and more effective in terms of how we work together? How do we break down silos but still give ownership? How do we create the infrastructure that's required to get Work done well and get work done in line with our values. And that's so much about the organization and the design of the organization, who are the people that we need? And I truly believe it's less about what are the titles that we're hiring for, and it's more about who are the type of people, the type of thinkers, and the types of skills that we need in the organization today and what does that look like tomorrow. So I think that's where the organizational design part came in from the beginning and it's evolved. I mean, every, if you ask people.

Who.

Who work here, I mean, every six months we look a little bit different. And I don't think that's about change as much as it's about the maturity, the evolution, the keeping up with the time. And so the organizational design is probably where I'm the most passionate and what ultimately drives where I'm focusing at any given time. And then on the other side of that, my role from the beginning has been able to also look externally and say, how is the organizational design, the people that we have, the way that we work together, the system and tools that we've built for ourselves, how does that facilitate, how we communicate to our supporters, how we achieve our mission, how we work with our partners. And so that kind of matrix or hybrid of thinking about.

The operations and the mission and how we accomplish those things together, I guess has always been really.

Kind of baked into the way we work over here at Water.

I love what you said about your role and this type of role being. You get to wear many hats. I worked at a startup where I was the first employee as it grew to 30 and it was the same thing. I could do five roles within my one because it wasn't so much about the role or the label. It was just about jumping in and helping out. And I have coaching clients who are sometimes self conscious that they're jack of all trades, master of none. But what you're describing is a role and a type of person that actually thrives. The role doesn't matter as much as the agility and the systems thinking and the ability to pitch in and see what's needed because the organization is shifting, as you said, even every six months.

Yeah, I think that's a, it's a great fear. It's certainly one I've had before too, this jack of all trades, but kind of, you know, expert in none. And I think there's room for everything. You know, I think there's room for both types. I think we absolutely need Experts. Right. You need somebody that really great at content marketing and has done that. And, you know, when you're looking to build in your team, you're looking for somebody who knows how to do that job. And I think there is room for that, I think, in an operator. And especially, again, like kind of in today's day where there's just so many opportunities. I think when you keep an open mind about how you'll interpret your skill sets in an environment, I think that it opens so many different doors. I mean, if I've had the opportunity here at Water to do everything from work with our brand partners to events to internal operations, to, you know, create marketing content, to travel to the field to tell stories of people we're helping in the field, I don't think that would have been possible if I came in looking to climb a certain ladder with a certain set of responsibilities to gain a certain expertise.

But I think there's room. I think there's room for both, and it's probably. There's probably room for flexibility in both as well.

How many employees are there now at water?

We're about 75.

75. So I'm curious to know, can you share with us, like, a particularly hairy systems problem or something that was bottlenecked or not working that you fixed and just walk us through your thought process of how you streamline things?

Oh, gosh, yeah. The ones I'm thinking of are the ones that are not fixed.

Well, if you're. You don't have to share those. But even one about how you start to tackle or even frame up the problem is interesting, too.

Yeah. I mean, I think the thing that's current and thinking in my mind right now is that the nature of our. As you kind of, you know, really eloquently put when you were introducing Water from the beginning, one of. One of the really core principles of how we do what we do is try to make our message of what we're trying to achieve as simple as possible so as many people can gravitate towards it. Right. Everybody in the world deserves access to clean water. And so many people have come out to support us in that mission. And one of our promises is that 100% of those funds will go to the field to make a difference for people in need. And the key to that there is that we'll show you the proof of it, and we want to bring you as close to your impact as possible. So on the outset, that's a really simple message, but on the inset, in terms of how. How does the organization actually achieve that? How do we actually take the, you know, the dollars that are coming in from our supporters and tie those to the programs that we're working in in developing countries, we're working in 24 different countries. And then how do we bring that impact back to you in a tangible way that shows you, hey, you know, you donated $30 to this campaign and here's the impact of that. So internally we have a pretty complex infrastructure that is incredibly cross matrixed in order to achieve that. And it requires every department in our organization and a variety of tools to be able to take a dollar that comes in, tie it to work in the field, track it while it's in the field, over that time while our WATER projects are being implemented by our partners on the ground, and then bring it all the way back when it's done and show you the impact. So that's something we actually call dollars to projects. It's a term we use internally and externally as it relates to that reporting experience that we offer. And it's one of the systems that I've worked on since the day that I started at water. I remember it was a big bold vision that our CEO, founder Scott Harrison had from the beginning, which is that we're going to do this, but we actually didn't know internally how and there wasn't a system that existed to it for us. So we've, I think my biggest way in terms of thinking about solving a complex system architecture infrastructure challenge is that that's never going to be over because you're constantly learning and evolving it to be more efficient and more effective and to utilize the data and information coming in and the opportunities you have to communicate it out. So it's been something that we constantly look at our both how is our organization structured around how we deliver our promise of showing impact? What are the tools that we have that support that? And we've built a lot of our own systems for tracking different elements of the way that we do that. And we almost every six months to, every year kind of take a step back and say what is working and what's not working and where is there efficiencies that can be had within this system? Most recently we've been looking at how can our.

Our CRM tool actually be utilized to replace some of the existing bespoke tools that we had created years ago? How can we merge those together to make this a more seamless connection between our supporters and their impact and their donations?

I'm just hearing the angels singing in my Ears with all the systems talk.

It's how so many good things. And I also want to come back to this phrase, cross matrixed and just make sure that I understand what you're saying. So can you explain cross matrixed meaning like a day in the life of the dollar is going to touch almost every department and system and that you need to be able to link that all together.

That's exactly, that's exactly right. I think it's the. One of the coolest things about our organization and what I love about so much is that it takes all of these different departments and expertise to bring come together to be able to achieve our mission and our promise to our supporters. So that's our water programs team who are on the ground working with our partners, looking over the dollars that are put into the field, holding everything accountable, making sure that every water project that is put in is put into our standards, that the community is trained. That information, that data that's collected for thousands and thousands of and thousands of water projects all over the world, that needs to come back to us and we need to be able to transmit that into a story. And so the connection between our finance team, our water programs team, our marketing and creative team, they're all constantly working together and we haven't even talked there about how the money actually comes in, right. The fundraising efforts, the campaigns. So every part of our organization is so cross functional in how we work together. And so you need both kind of bridges and processing and bridges and tools to allow us to kind of optimize the skill sets that each of us are bringing in from our different areas of expertise.

I'm just going to pull out some key words that you've said. Bridges, processes. You also use words like transparent, which I think is a huge differentiator for water. Just how transparent you are and strive to be. As you said that, that Scott had a vision. He said, I want people to know where their money's going and to see it and have a story for it and photos at every step. And then I also love the way you described how I love the word bespoke. I actually didn't know what it meant for the longest time. And even though you hear it like bespoke this or that, it's all over Brooklyn and what is that? And maybe you can define it better than I can, but essentially like a custom one off solution and that it's okay that you started with bespoke solutions. And I love what you said about that efficiency and effectiveness metric. You're not done there's no there there, that you're actually always in the process of looking at your systems and saying what started as bespoke or a prototype or kind of a jerry rigged solution that you can kind of improve over time and that it's really an ongoing process, not a one time fix.

Absolutely. It's almost just like the Agile method to how you think about the entire operation of the business. Maybe not just the way you ship products or you ship code, but that you're in a constant state of iteration. And I think, yeah, you're exactly right. Bespoke are these customized one off things that I think if they work, you optimize and try to make them more scalable. But you're not always building that scalable solution first because you're not sure what you're building for yet.

And it's so interesting too because the other reason I think systems, you're not necessarily done just once, you solve it once, is that technology is always evolving. So I don't know if you ever saw the movie Boyhood. The director was Richard Linklater. He worked on it for 12 years.

Yes, I love that movie.

It's epic. And I got to go. I saw the premiere at BAM in Brooklyn and he spoke afterward. He was there with some of the actors and he said when we started filming in the first few years, there were editing solutions we needed that didn't exist yet. And it wasn't until year 11 that then the editing software could replace a poster in the boy's bedroom that needed to be replaced or things that would have been prohibitively expensive when they started. And it strikes me that with systems thinking as well, we're so fortunate that all these Apps and Web 2.0 and cloud computing tools keep evolving at the pace that they are. And that like, even if we come up with the best solution at a given time, in two years, there might be a better, cheaper, faster one.

Absolutely. And that's a. That movie is great.

I know, it's so good. It's so good. Everyone should watch it.

It's really interesting too what you described about just being open to change. And that's something that I talk a lot about. That pivot is both a mindset and I developed a method to think about how to map what's next, what helps you stay grounded and stay sane in a rapidly changing environment, and one with so much complexity. As you said, in a role that's not really anything like your role is what you make of it any given week or month or year. Yeah, I don't mean anything, you know, like with all respect, it's nothing.

I think that's right. It's anything, everything and nothing probably at the same time.

I guess for me it's similar to what you practice in terms of it's a mindset and a methodology.

For me, I don't think about it, I guess as change. I think about it as.

This constant evolution, this fact that every day when you walk in what's real is what's important. What's important is what's in front of you and what the opportunity or challenge is that's most important then. And there's only so much planning you can do for some of those things. So I think, I guess I'm a very present or I strive to be a present person and you want to have goals and plans about where you want to be. But it's really hard to stare at those and look at those and actually see what's going on around you and be open to that. So I guess I've just been. Tried to really be focused on the now whilst knowing what my values are and what's important to me and the things that I might want to achieve down the road, but kind of keeping enough flexibility and enough openness to not, you know, kind of not miss what's right in front of you. There was a. This is kind of related, unrelated, but there was this podcast I was listening to recently. I think it was on Tim Ferriss podcast. But somebody's quote was about this idea of there's never been a billboard that said here's the perfect idea, you should do it. There was something like that, just this idea that there is no kind of clear path and sign. And so remaining the idea of not thinking about change is something that you have to brace down and get ready for as opposed to. It's just like the next day on the job has made it a lot easier for me and I've found it as an opportunity because it has allowed me to stay within an organization that I love and value for a really long time and never be bored because every day I can reinvent, reinvent my role as long as I can be focused on what's most important at that moment. And so it allows for so much flexibility and growth in ways that I could have never. I could have never planned for myself.

I love how you brought in that idea of presence and having goals but not staying fixated on them because then you miss what's in your environment. And it is also really cool to hear you describe how by Connecting to the organization's values. You can then have a really dynamic career experience, even having been there over a decade that you don't have to something. I've always like giving companies credit when they hire me to speak because they must be on some level worried I'm gonna tell everyone to pivot out of there.

But actually my number one message is, start right where you are. And you don't have to leave in order to grow, but you do need to be open, as you said, open and creative and available to shifting within the company. And then ideally on the organizational side, the company also has to be willing to create a sense of internal mobility and make that process easier as well.

Yeah, I think you're so right. And it's something I try to talk to a lot of team members about that I get to work with here at water, because I think we're trained to think about career growth in a very specific way, which is title, compensation, and kind of ladder based, like, I need to get my boss's job. And WATER is just not. We're not structured that way. We've never really structured ourselves that way because it hasn't been effective, at least, you know, for us. And so there's so much room to grow and to evolve. But if you're looking to become, you know, the designer and then the senior designer, then the art director, then the creative director, then the chief creative officer, like, we don't even have all those roles here. You know what I mean? But you can figure out what is it about the art director or position that's really what you're striving for and what's going to make you better in your career, whether it be at our organization or somewhere else. And then how do we get you those skills and that experience? And I think that goes back to this kind of concept of, like, it's not about what your job title is.

It'S about what you do and how you're willing to kind of expand what you work on. And that's not always easy and obvious at all. I think oftentimes you all of a sudden realize you're on something that you didn't ever see yourself working on. You know, I think it's more about, like staying open and kind of staying present. And then all of a sudden you see the opportunity while you're already a little bit in it. At least that's been, in my case. A lot of the. A lot of the time you.

Oh, sorry, go ahead.

Oh, no, no. I was just gonna say, you know, it's not for. For me, it hasn't been laid out as like, here's this obvious next step. It's kind of been like, oh, I feel like this is evolving over here. Explore that.

Yeah, And I'm interested in this, of how you know for you when it's time to pivot, because some people are going to get an aha moment, like they wake up and think, I'm out of here, I'm done, or whatever the moment is. But actually for more people, as you said, it's not this obvious sign that's on a billboard. So I know before Water, you were doing fashion and events. How did you know it was time to shift? And how did you eventually work your way into the consulting role at water?

Yeah, that's a great, great question. So my, I mean, I think the first pivot for me was even pre prevent was from thinking about my role as a specialty. My background was more communications and pr. And I remember the first pivot for me really early in my career was I felt very siloed into one type of thinking about.

A company and one part of that organization or company's Persona. And I remember having this feeling of wanting to be more holistically involved. And maybe, I guess now looking back, it's kind of that conversation we started with, which is like, you know, the brand is the innards are the outards and the outwards are the innards. It's all the same. And I think I had that craving really early on and maybe couldn't it put. Put a name to it? So my first pivot was from specializing in a specific area of communications to trying to be more involved from a brand point of view. And so thinking about a company or a brand or a designer or whatever that might be from kind of a more well rounded point of view. So that could have been working with kind of like a young designer and not just thinking about what is the press release, but what is the feeling that we want the editor to read when they see this press release? And then how do they get that through the designs that the designer is creating and how does that transcend through the way the showroom looks and the way the employees interact and all that? So I think I've always tried to. That first pivot was kind of understanding the whole and not just kind of the sum of the parts type of a thing. So I think that was my first pivot. And then from there.

With fashion and branding and some of the work I was doing on the more kind of marketing and brand side I loved. But I think like so many people, after a few years working on something, you get a little bit stalled out. A lot of folks that we have that come over to Water kind of after some great experience in the for profit sector, find that they're just looking for more. I think that I was just kind of on the edge of that and feeling a little bit bored, I guess, was the right term. And then honestly, it was just a series of fate that led Charity Water kind of around and into my universe and opened up the door to say, hey, let's like poke around inside and do this consulting. I at the time was helping with their gala and then being present, being open, being in the right time, at the right place. Place at the right time is a better way of saying that. Helped me kind of see this, this opportunity for stepping back. And I think within the question of how do you pivot? I think the first step is creating a space for yourself to see what's around you. So a lot of us just go to work every day and are buried in what's working or what's not working. But we haven't created the space to really understand that. So I think one thing I did during that pivot was creating space to look around and say, what is the opportunity here and how does it match up with what I thought I was going to do or what I think I can do? I think the second thing is listening to people around you. I mean, even in my role here, how it's pivoted within the organization over my time has oftentimes been because I have my ears open to A, what are people saying they need? And B, what is the feedback I'm getting from people on what's working and what's not working and where they might see areas that I can contribute to that I didn't even think about. So I think it being around people, you know, creating the space for yourself to see things, but then being around people that you admire and trust and you listen to their opinions, I think also helps you kind of see pivots that you wouldn't have seen before.

You know, without kind of getting a little bit of extra feedback.

I love it. It's like, you know, you're a systems thinker. I love that you broke down your own pivot method. So great. Step one, space. Step two, listen. I also think we could give a preliminary step, which you mentioned words like, like feeling side siloed, feeling bored. And those are the signals that I often describe to people too. And I think if you're high net growth. I mentioned that term to you before we hit record that, actually. Yeah. Feeling siloed is gonna be the number one thing or bored is gonna be the reason that you start to look elsewhere. And then I love how step three in your preliminary moves was fate. That it's okay not to know once again, because once you create the space, once you have the aw, there's more for me, or I feel siloed, I feel stuck. Then fate does have some room to breathe and intervene and have you be in the perfect place at the perfect time.

Exactly. Totally.

How do you create that space to think in your own career, given that? Of course. And you guys just put on the charity ball gala and, by the way, put a pin in the space question. I think it's pretty awesome that you pivoted from fashion and events into doing water's gala and then probably kicked. Kicked that, like, kicked ass so much on that, knocked it out of the park that they said, hey, you're really good at this. Why don't you manage more than just the ball?

So cool.

Thank you. Yeah, it was. Yeah, definitely an unexpected and very fun, very fun ride the whole way through. Absolutely.

And so. Yeah. And also, it helps you kind of prove yourself to the organization. And I tell this to people a lot, too. You didn't apply for COO right out of the gate. You said, hey, I'm great at managing events. Let me. You know, they also picked you to work on the ball. And as that went well, it built and snowballed over time into the role that you have now.

Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the cool things and as people think about pivots in their career, one of the cool things that I've had the opportunity to do, and I certainly don't take all the credit for this, I think it's because I'm in a really amazing environment. But of my time at water, from consulting through COO today, I have been able to propose design and kind of move into every role that I've created. And I've been the first person in the role for all of the roles that I've been. So when I went from consulting on the gala where it was, I think for me in my time, I was, as we said, bored and siloed and kind of trying to see what else was out there. And WATER was at a place where they were trying to figure out what is the next stage. The organization was young and growing really quickly and trying to figure out what does the next stage of growth look like? How we got here probably isn't exactly the same way. We're going to get to our next stage of growth. And so the role that I was able to move into from the consultant kind of event producer role was my title was executive producer, which was the first, the first of its kind, I guess the only one that we had. And the idea was very much about how do you bridge. We talked about earlier, kind of bridge the gaps of the organization. How do we build processes.

And infrastructure to help the organization be able to get work done in the right way and also bring on and retain the right type of people to help us achieve that in our mission. And then from there, every step of the way, kind of every few years there's been this opportunity to redesign the role myself. And so I've been able to kind of based on staying present, based on listening to what people are saying and also within the organization feeling bored. Hey, I feel like I'm not needed over here anymore. This is being done really well by or better by someone else. Which is the best, frankly the best feeling I typically have in the organization is when all of a sudden I've been doing something that somebody else starts doing a lot better. That's a great feeling. It means it's time to move on and find where else there's need. I've been lucky that within WATER that's continued to. We haven't run out of things yet for me to do and developing and evolving that in my own career and growth. And I think a lot of there's a lot of other people at the organization have had similar, similar experiences. We have a great story of somebody who came in as our, was a volunteer, started as a receptionist, then led our volunteer program and is now an integral part of our WATER programs team working with our partners in the field. She's been here just a little less than I've been here. So we have that this is a culture that allows that which I think is a really important part of. If this is something that's important to people in their careers, choosing a place that has a mindset and a methodology in terms of growth of people like this I think is really helpful. But yeah, so from event producer to coo, it hasn't and it was certainly not, certainly didn't see that seven years ago.

I just love hearing stories like the one you shared with the person who started as a receptionist and yours that you've designed and created your role at every step and especially the perspective that by the time you're bored, it's A good thing. And I often say that to people too. Your pivot's not a problem. It's actually a sign of your success that you outgrew your previous role. Someone else is doing it maybe even better than you. And I love your perspective that instead of being discouraged by that, you celebrate it and you say, great, what's next? What else can I pitch in on that fits my skill set?

Yeah, there's a great. There's a really good, funny book called Do Over.

Yeah, John, have you read that?

Yeah. Yeah. And I like his matrix for when you run into a place where it's a pivot or a do over. And I think it resonates with what you just said, which is like, it's not always a bad thing or maybe it's never a bad thing, but it is an opportunity. I guess he has that matrix right where it can. It's either like you've hit the ceiling or, you know, whatever. There's this kind of. It's either you're in your control or out of your control. And I think that's an interesting way of thinking about it and thinking about your career evolution where you're always going to be in one of those matrixes of the do over box.

Let's come back to the space question, just so we don't leave people hanging. How do you create the space to zoom out and look at how and when? How often do you do this, say within a given year where you really zoom out and say, where am I needed? Or what do I want? What aligns with my vision?

Yeah, this is something that I want to be a lot better at than I am. So I hope I can answer this question in the future and do a better job. The truth of it is that there's probably two big chunks of time a year where my husband, who also is kind of an operator in a similar. Worked in similar environments. He's actually worked. He usually was our former CFO at Charity Water. So we've worked together and he now works in startup. We usually find at least two times a year where we can pull away from everything day to day, pull away from the work, try to take at least three days. Sometimes it's longer to just create space for ourselves, to a enjoy things outside of our offices and our work lives, which are so important to us, but also just to start to kind of journal and explore what's next. So we. We've taken a couple of breaks like that throughout the year. So I think those are important where it's more than an hour a morning or something like that, where you're really stepping away. That's an important part of it for me. I'm also a big yogi.

And I'm a control freak and I'm competitive. So yoga for me is my alter ego because I like to put myself in a space where it's not about competition and it is about reflection. Again, I said I'm, like, kind of really present in the moment. So I'm not great at meditation and some of those things that help to kind of calm you down in the space. And so I use yoga as a way to create that space on a more regular basis for me.

And then I'm. And then I think I'm. You know, the things that I'd like to strive to do better in and to create space are journaling and as I mentioned, meditation. It's something that I. That I've yet, very. Yet to master, only kind of begun to try. But I think what that speaks to in terms of me for creating space is the constant itch and reminder that I need to create space for myself is a motivation enough to continue to look outside of myself to figure out ways to do that. So whether it's listening to others who.

Benefit from getting up really early in the morning and taking a cold shower and taking a walk before they check their email, I'm always kind of looking and trying to listen to what others who are trying to master. How do you create space do.

I don't have the formula yet.

Yeah, I love yoga too, for that reason. I even love yoga for improving my relationship to boredom, that there are many classes where I go and I'm bored at a certain point. Not that the whole thing bores me. I always feel amazing once I leave. But it's kind of like, however, whatever mood you're in, you just show up and by the end you'll feel better than when you started. But it does not mean you won't go through dips even within an hour. Class of being bored, tired, annoyed, frustrated, competitive, like, every range of the emotional spectrum.

I totally. I totally agree. I think another really good test of that, that I. That's been funny for me is if I bring a friend to yoga who's not necessarily a yogi, and you find, at least for me, I find myself just thinking about, like, what do they think? Are they bored? Do they laugh? You know, and you're like, wow, I'm so not. What am I doing? But like, that. That kind of forced awareness in those situations of, like, where Your where does your mind go? Is really interesting.

I think you'd also love, if you haven't already read it, Tim Ferriss, tribe of Mentors. I was unsure if I wanted to read it, but if you listen to his podcast, he does ask over a hundred people the question of how do you create space and what are your practices and how do you say no? And I actually, by the time I was done reading the whole, whole brick of a book, I was like, better, better at saying no and creating space.

So that's awesome.

Yeah, I'll read it. Lauren, this has been so fun to chat with you. Thank you for sharing your perspective on your role and how you see things. I always like to leave people with one mini assignment that they can apply to their lives after they stop listening. So if you could encourage people to do one thing, what would it be?

This thing of what's working for me, where do I want to be? Where could I see myself going? And what are the lines or the connections between those things? How do I evolve today to take that to wherever I want it to be next? Am I present enough to even to even see that? And presence is, I think, partially knowing and creating the space to come up with what might be an opportunity for you. And the other part of that is, like we talked about fate and just being open enough to let things come in.

Lauren, thank you so much. And where can people find you if they want to keep in touch?

Well, you can find me. I am on Instagram and all those fun spaces. And we also love to hear from folks. So you can find us@charity wateraritywater.org, head to our website and people can email me too if they want to chat. So laurenaritywater.org is a great way to reach me. Easy enough. Enough.

Awesome. Lauren, thank you again. Thank you for being here.

Awesome. Thank you. It was really fun.

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