In this Business Blast podcast episode, host Tyler Wagner interviews Lawler Kang, CEO of League of Allies and author of The E‑Ticket. Kang shares a pivotal personal story: at 14 he suffered a cerebral aneurysm that left him partially paralyzed and forced a dramatic shift in perspective, leading him to Vassar and a lifelong commitment to equity. He explains how women and diverse teams drive financial performance, influencing top‑line revenue, bottom‑line costs, and even cost of capital. Kang offers business advice centered on aligning personal purpose with organizational mission, urging leaders to help employees discover and integrate their own dreams and values. He reflects on advice he would give his younger self—identify purpose early—and defines happiness as doing work you would gladly do for free. Kang recommends the Arbinger Group’s Leadership and Self‑Deception for its insight on seeing people as humans rather than stereotypes, and cites the ancient maxim “Know thyself” and Voltaire’s “tend to your own garden” as guiding quotes. The episode closes with a plug for his website, www.leagueofallies.com, and a sponsor read for Authors Unite.
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Welcome to the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. This episode is brought to you by Authors Unite. Authors Unite provides you with all the resources you need to become a successful author. You can learn more about Authors Unite and join the free community at authorsunite.com. Now let's jump into the episode.
¡Hola! ¿Cómo estás?
All right, everyone, welcome back to another episode of the Business Blast podcast. I'm your host, Tyler Wagner. Today I have Lawler Kang with us. He's the CEO of League of Allies, a professional services firm focused on building equity in their clients through gender parity, balance, and inclusion. And his most recent book is The E-Ticket. So welcome to the show, man.
Thanks so much.
Of course, man. Thank you for joining us. Uh, we'll dive into the first one. The first question I have for you is, what is the best story from your life that has an underlying valuable message?
So, um, great question. Um, the message here, I believe, is, is being able to look at privilege from a different perspective. Um, but when I was 14, I was sort of your classic alpha male Freshman class president, co-captain football team, Eagle Scout, blah, blah, blah. And then during a game, I got whacked in the head and suffered a cerebral aneurysm, which left me paralyzed waist down post-trauma, right side paralyzed, blind, verbally challenged, looking like the Elephant Man post-op. Wow. Took about 9 months to recover from this stuff. And in those 9 months, I realized I started seeing the world through dramatically different colored lenses of dramatically less privilege than sort of being top of the patriarchal heap there. Those lenses led me to Vassar College, which was a remarkably awesome experience. It was the first time in my life I had been sort of plucked from our patriarchal norms and put in an environment where I was dramatically outnumbered by dramatically more intelligent women who were kind of vocal with their views. And it was a real sort of comeuppance, in a manner of speaking. I left Vassar with the distinct desire to take on the role of human first, male second. And a big part of that has carried through in my current work, which sort of, you know, explores bias, privilege, boundaries, et cetera, in corporations.
Thanks for sharing that with us, man. The next one I have for you is, what is the most valuable piece of information we should know that is within your expertise or industry?
Women add tremendous value to organizations. Diverse communities do as well. The data showed that women add more impact, but women can impact your top line, your bottom line, and they can also influence your cost of capital or your discount rate if you want to get into sort of financial projections. But I just cannot underscore that enough. Women add tremendous value, board level, CXO level, to just percentage of workforce.
And what's your best piece of overall business advice? So not necessarily industry specific.
Tyler? Yep. I'm sorry, I just got a call in the background. I'm so sorry.
No, no, no, it's okay. This is a fun, authentic podcast, so that's actually fine.
Yeah, exactly.
I agree.
I'm kind of busy, so.
I like it that way. That's all good. Do you want me to repeat the last question?
If you would, that'd be great. Yeah, thank you.
No problem. What is your best piece of overall business advice? So not necessarily industry specific.
So I would say figure out what your personal purposes are, what your dreams are, and try to find ways to fulfill them at work. That could be in a company mission or purpose statement, in company values. And I found— my first book is called Passion at Work, and I've done workshops with like Cisco, HP, Pfizer, etc., aligning essentially these kind of inputs with people's sort of personal outputs. But from an alignment perspective, there's no better way to engage your workforce than by Figuring out what your personal purposes are and then marrying them up with those of your manager, maybe the CEO, and the company's as well.
And if you could give your younger self one piece of advice, what would that be?
My younger self. I would say absolutely to figure out what my personal purpose, dreams, passions, values are as soon as I can. And let them guide my career/life decisions. My two personal purposes are to constructively rock the boat and to help everyone I can reach in time in my life live happy, healthy, purposeful lives. And the question's become recently how to scale those two purposes. And I couldn't be happier doing what I'm doing.
And in your opinion, it might actually tie in, but in your opinion, what is the key to happiness?
The key to happiness is doing something you just love to do. I often challenge people and say, you know, would you do this for free? And people say yes, then you know you're on a very good track. Yeah.
And what is the best book that you've read and what was the number one thing that you learned from that?
Um, wow. I would have to say this great book by the Arbinger Group called Leadership and Self-Deception. And it's— the takeaway there is we have to look at each other as human beings versus objects for stereotypes. And that is the best way to avoid bias. It's the best way to be happy, frankly.
And what is your favorite quote and why?
I would have to say sort of two maybe overlapping quotes: know thyself. And Socrates said that, and that sort of carries over to, "We must tend to our own gardens first." And that was quoted by Voltaire. But I think to really be happy, healthy, contributing humans, we have to understand and deal with ourselves first.
And thank you, thank you so much for coming on, man. The last question I have for you before we let you go is, where is the best place for people to find you online?
Just www.leagofallies.com. Yeah, that's, that's where you can find me.
Perfect, man. Thank you again for joining us. Appreciate it.
My pleasure, Tyler. Thank you very much.
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