How to Find Fulfillment in Your Career with Laura Gassner Otting
Episode 157
Are you feeling trapped in the relentless pursuit of success that society has sold you? Have traditional markers of success left you doubting your path and questioning your purpose? If you're nodding along, it's time to unravel the threads of success that have bound us for far too long and rediscover what truly makes us tick.
Today's Unstoppable Grit Podcast with Danielle Cobo peels back the layers of what it means to be truly successful. We're joined by the brilliant Laura Gasner Otting, who shares her transformative journey from law school to working with President Bill Clinton, to penning the Wall Street Journal bestseller "Wonderhell." Together, we delve into the heart of our discontents.
After this Episode, You Will Be Able to ...
Redefine your personal metrics for success
Balance your aspirational goals with a fulfilling personal life
Leverage the principles of manifestation to transform goals into reality
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About the Guest
Laura’s secret superpower is seeing your greatness and reflecting it back on you, so that you can get “unstuck” — and achieve extraordinary results.
A frequent contributor to Good Morning America, the TODAY Show, Harvard Business Review, and Oprah Daily, Laura’s 30-year resume is defined by her entrepreneurial edge.
She served as a Presidential Appointee in Bill Clinton’s White House, helping shape AmeriCorps; left a leadership role at respected national search firm to expand a tech start-up; and founded, ran, and sold her own global search firm, partnering with the full gamut of mission driven corporate and nonprofit executives.
She’s turned on by the audacity of The Big Idea and that larger-than-life goal you just can’t seem to shake. She’s an instigator, motivator, and provocateur, and she’s never met a revolution she didn’t like. Just ask her enduringly patient husband, two almost-grown sons, and two troublesome pups with whom she lives outside of Boston, MA.
Connect with Laura Gassner Otting:
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About the Host:
Danielle Cobo is an international female speaker for organizations, associations, and the public sector. She works with audiences to harness the grit and resilience to lead through change.
With over 15 years of corporate experience in the medical sales industry, she knows how to build high-performing teams that increase sales, productivity, and employee retention. Her expertise includes corporate resilience and burnout prevention.
Danielle is the author of “Unstoppable Grit: Breakthrough the 7 Roadblocks Standing Between You and Achieving Your Goals” and hosts the globally top-rated podcast "Unstoppable Grit Podcast with Danielle Cobo.”
As a former Fortune 500 Senior Sales Manager, she led her team through downsizing, restructuring, and acquisitions to become the #1 sales team in the nation. As a result, she was awarded Region Manager of the Year. Her resiliency motivated her to earn four consecutive national Sales Excellence Awards in a male-dominated industry.
While her husband, a Blackhawk pilot in the Army, deployed to Iraq for a year, Danielle learned to balance a demanding job while caring for their energetic 1.5-year-old twin boys, who possess more energy than a squirrel after a triple espresso.
Danielle’s resilience led her to start her own business, helping others develop the grit, resilience, and courage to thrive in life and business.
Her tenacious attitude stems from being raised by an ambitious mother and recovering from being taken from her father and cast out at 17 years of age.
She is a two-time 60-mile walker and a monster truck driver in Louboutin’s.
Danielle has a bachelor’s in communication with a minor in psychology from the California State University of Fullerton, Certification in Inclusive and Ethical Leadership from the University of South Florida Muma College of Business, and accreditation in Human Behavior from Personality Insights. Inc., and Leadership from Boston Breakthrough Academy.
She is a member of the National Speakers Association, the Central Florida National Speakers Association Chapter, Innovation Women, and a former member of Working Women of Tampa Bay. Danielle serves on the Military Advisory, Workforce Development, and Women of Influence Committees of the Tampa Chamber of Commerce. She is also a contributing writer for Women's Quarterly Magazine.
Her experience includes serving as a Training Pillar on the Military Spouse Economic Empowerment Zone Committee and Career Transition Advisor for Dallas Professional Women.
Through Danielle's captivating storytelling, content-rich and motivational style, she empowers individuals and organizations to cultivate unwavering resilience, igniting a transformative path towards increased sales, productivity, employee retention, and collaboration.
About the Show:
The Unstoppable Grit Podcast with Danielle Cobo explores the journeys of people who have overcome adversity and harnessed the grit and resilience to thrive in all areas of their lives, Guests share how they overcame difficult times - the strategies, mindset shifts, lessons they learned along the way, and actions that propelled them forward. From navigating career setbacks to overcoming personal obstacles, each episode is a testament to grit and resilience.
You'll learn how to develop the grit and resilience to lead yourself and others through change.
Join host Danielle Cobo, keynote speaker and author of "Unstoppable Grit: Break Through the 7 Roadblocks Standing Between You and Your Goals." A new episode is released every Wednesday at 4:00 AM EST.
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Danielle, I have followed your career a little bit watching your ted talk, and I am just so curious. You started law school, dropped out of law school, but ended up working alongside President Bill Clinton. Tell us a little bit about that.
Yeah. I was in law school because I had grown up thinking that the definition of success was get straight a's in high school, go to college, go to law school, become a partner. I thought I was going to run for office. I thought I was going to run for Senate. And then I got to law school and I found myself totally miserable. Like, on the very first day, I was that student that got called upon by the teacher and got asked question after question after question until I fell apart in a puddle of tears. So I did what a lot of us high achieving women do when we find ourselves in miserable situations. I dated the world's worst boyfriend.
I like to joke around that the world's worst boyfriend had exquisite taste in precisely two things. The first obviously being girlfriends, but the second being unknown presidential hopefuls from tiny southern states. And he was like, I'm going to give you a ride home from class in his irock z, by the way, which will give you, like, a perfect visual of this guy. But I want to stop at this guy's campaign office. He's running for president. And I was like, governor? Who? From where? Like, not a chance. George W. Bush had just won Desert Storm.
What Sparked A Change in Laura’s Political Perspective
There wasn't a chance. The Democrats were putting up like a sacrificial lamb. But I walked into this campaign office in Gainesville, Florida, and there was this little teeny black and white tv in the corner. And on that teeny black and white tv was then brown haired Governor Bill Clinton giving this impassioned plea about how there's nothing wrong with America that can't be fixed with what's right with America. And, Danielle, I still believe that today. And he offered us a policy solution. Service, community service in exchange for college tuition. So, like, change your world while you change yourself.
There wasn't a chance. The Democrats were putting up like a sacrificial lamb. But I walked into this campaign office in Gainesville, Florida, and there was this little teeny black and white tv in the corner. And on that teeny black and white tv was then brown haired Governor Bill Clinton giving this impassioned plea about how there's nothing wrong with America that can't be fixed with what's right with America. And, Danielle, I still believe that today. And he offered us a policy solution. Service, community service in exchange for college tuition. So, like, change your world while you change yourself.
And I was volunteering and volunteering, and eventually they were like, do you want to come volunteer in this office, and the office was the campaign. There was the office of National Service, which eventually created Americorps, which was the program where kids could serve in their communities and get college tuition.
Discover Success Beyond Expectations
So I tell people that I was young enough that I was willing to live in horrible conditions and eat terrible food and sleep on friends couches. And I also was young enough that I was idealistic and optimistic enough that I didn't know what could go wrong. I just assumed, like, if you just keep showing up, it'll work out. And I think that probably shaped a lot of my career, which is like, I'm just going to keep showing up, and I don't have to be the best. I just have to have the most fortitude sometimes.
And you had a very successful career for a long time. For 20 years, you spent your career working alongside President Bill Clinton. You spent a career in recruiting and recruiting executives. However, you found yourself. I was watching your TED talk, and you found yourself on a plane and realizing that success is not always great at the top.
There's more to it. Absolutely. So I left the White House to become an executive recruiter, mostly because I've been successful at my sort of peon level. And between my peon level and becoming the domestic policy advisor was probably ten to 15 years of actual, real policy work. I didn't have that. I was kind of too old to get back on a campaign bus and too young to do something real. And so I went to go talk to a headhunter, and at the time, I was dating another guy who I was like, I think you're the one, and you're about to move to Boston. This headhunter's office is in Boston.
Maybe I should just go work for him. And I did, and he was like, you should work for me. I'm like, what do you do? He's like, I'm a headhunter. I'm like, tell me about that. So I'd taken the job before I even knew what it was, but I knew the guy was the one. By the way, that guy and I have now been married for 25 years, so, like, good bet on that one. But I think there's so many times in our lives where we think that success looks a certain way, and we're sort of pursuing this idea, and then we run really fast towards it, and then something happens, something in life happens, something in the world happens, and we shift our focus, and then suddenly we're like, wait, I have to figure out my new definition. And so because of that, when I found myself.
The Dark Side of Success
Fast forward 20 years of the highest level executive searches, like, from the Oval office to the corner office where I spent my time. I had put out my last book, limitless, and I was on this airplane. And it's hilarious because what I don't talk about in the TED talk is what actually went down, which is that I was in Vancouver giving a keynote. I was opening for Malala. And I had, by the way, was in the green room with her right before I went on. And I was like, I'm going to tell her that she's my idol and she's amazing and what a leader.
And by the time I walked across the green room to talk to her, next to her guards with her uzis, I was like, I like your, like, completely lost all composure whatsoever. So I'm on the airplane and I'm exhausted from all the work that it took to launch the book. And I'm flipping through my phone and I see the selfie that I took with Malala, which, by the way, she looks amazing and wise and composed, and I look like a troll under the bridge because I'm just like. And I get texts from my publisher saying, your book just debuted at number two on the Washington Post bestseller list. And I was so exhausted that the part of my brain that governs my humility was left behind in the airport lounge in Vancouver that all I could think of in that moment was, how do you get to be number one? I just did this thing that I didn't even know was possible for me. I was so successful. And the work I did open all these doors. And in looking through those doors, all I could think of was, wow, there's other doors.
Maybe I want to go there. And I wasn't able to be happy in that moment of wonder. All I could feel was the impostor syndrome and the uncertainty and the exhaustion and the envy and the doubt and the burnout of the hell. And so I opened up my laptop and I wrote the screed of a Facebook post where I was like, if they say you can name it, you can claim it. And that's. If they name it, you can tame it. I'm like, that's nonsense. I want to name it so I can claim it.
And I posted it on Facebook. And I'm like, I'm going to call this space wonderhell. The space where the burden of your potential walks in and asks, what can you do? And within, like, 6 minutes, and this is like, 07:00 a.m. On a Sunday, the post went viral, and people are like, that's an amazing idea. I'm in that spot. And I realized I wasn't alone. Like so many of us find ourselves in this place where we achieve something we didn't even know was possible for us. And in that moment of achievement, we don't stop long enough to say, wow, that's cool, because we're so busy realizing that the view from there is even better than we ever expected.
And then we go to figure out how we're going to survive these moments. And so my new book, Wonderhell, is all about the research and the interviews that I did to figure out how to survive the moment that I found myself in. Because I realized this wasn't unique to me. I figured somebody out there had to have answers.
A Journey from Idealized Dreams to Reality
I think a lot of people can relate to where you were in Wonderhell. When I think of what success looks like, I had this vision of what success is, which is a big, beautiful house, kids, a beautiful family, and climbing the corporate ladder, working for a Fortune 500 company, and having pets, cats, dogs, whatever it was. I just had this picturesque moment of what success looked like. And I had it. I had it. But when I look back, I was not happy. I thought I was happy, but I was constantly searching for more and more. And then it wasn't until I had a very life altering shift within my life where within six months, my husband returned home from a deployment, I lost my mom to suicide.
Then the pandemic hit. Then I was in a toxic work environment, and all of a sudden, my life got flipped upside down. We all kind of have those moments in life that shake us. That was mine. For me, for you was this moment. Then you were in Wonderhell. And we're looking at ourselves going, we thought that we'd be happier when we're at, when we're in this success, but really, there's more to it. And I want to know from you, what did you envision success looking like?
Well, the same thing I envision. Right house, right spouse, right clothes in exactly the right size. Right. I envisioned the whole thing. I grew up when I was in fourth grade, I had a teacher who said, laura, you're a really argumentative young woman. You should become a lawyer. I was in fourth grade. Of course, the first thing I responded to her was, I think you're wrong, because I was argumentative.
But still, I'm about to be 53. So, like, this is the, I'm watching Allie McBeal on tv, I'm watching La law, and I'm like, ooh, these lady lawyers are glamorous. And I'm like, I want to do that. And subconsciously in my brain, that became my definition of success. My grandmother. When I was working at the White House, I met a nice jewish boy, a medical student, came from a good family, perfect teeth. I was like, my grandmother's like, he's the one. And I kiss him, and all I could think of was like, milk, butter, cheese, eggs.
I got to start on the dry cleaning and I got to get the dog groomed. I didn't have any spark with him, but my grandmother's like, just concentrate. So that became my definition of success. I thought all along the way, and then I'd have a boss that was like, bigger, better, faster, more. Most expedient path to the corner office. Forget what you care about. Forget manifesting your values at work all along the way. We have people who dump into our lives their definitions, and we onboard them.
And we mostly onboard them because when we're 15, 1617 years old, somebody says, pick a path, pick a major, pick a trade, pick a division of the military, right, whatever the thing is, and we go, oh, okay. But you know what you don't have when you're 15, 1617 years old? Common sense, perspective. A frontal lobe like the part of your brain that dictates good, sound, logical decision making doesn't exist till you're 22, 23 if you're a male, 26. So we're asked to make these decisions that are going to inform the very rest of our lives while we literally don't have the capacity to make a good one. But nobody ever says, oh, and by the way, as you grow, as you change, as you have relationships, as you become a parent, as there's a world pandemic, right? Things around us change, so we change and things around us change. And nobody ever says, go back and revisit that definition to make sure it's still good for you. For me, yeah. I had this moment of realization on that airplane.
But in 2021, I became so sick, so suddenly, I went from doing a hard 75 washboard abs running marathons to six weeks later not being able to walk. I had an autoimmune disease that literally 800 people in the entirety of the United States have ever been diagnosed with. And for three months, I had doctors looking at me with the like face which you never want to be. The interesting patient. I was the most interesting patient that the doctors at mass General Hospital had ever seen. The center of the medical universe. So I'm fine now. I'm in remission, everything is great.
But there was a moment in time for about six months where every plate in my life was up in the air, and I had to figure out which ones I was going to catch and be okay, letting the other ones shatter on the ground. So I relate to what you're saying, where you have these moments that are, like, cataclysmic. And for me, I think a lot of people, even if they didn't have these cataclysmic moments, came out of the pandemic saying, when life returns to normal is the normal, I'm going back to really the life I want. And I think a lot of us were like, no, but I also don't know how to put words and form and space to what it is that I actually want. And that's kind of what I try to do in my speaking and my writing is to help people create frameworks of definitions that they can find themselves inside of.
Well, what is your thought? Because coming out of the pandemic, there's this term, the great resignation. And I agree with you, a lot of people, when we came out of the pandemic, I looked back at my life, and a couple of years previous to the pandemic, I spent 250 nights on the road. And I was so excited when I got my diamond delta luggage tag and I got to get upgraded a first class. I was proud to put it on. And now I look back and I go, all that meant was I spent more time in a hotel than I did my own bed.
A Strategic Approach to a Lifelong Journey
Is that really what success is? And I say this in the sense of a lot of us look back and go, I don't know if that's the life I want to go back to. And at the same time, there's now some generations that are looking at other generations going, well, now you're soft. You're not as committed. Your values, they don't have a strong work ethic as other generations do. What's your thought process on that?
It's really interesting. I know a lot of people go on these podcasts and they just sort of pitch their bits right. We're just having a wide ranging conversation. So I'm going to tell you about a conversation I had literally just this morning with a friend of mine, another author, speaker in this space, and I have this dashboard of these are the number of gigs I did, and here's how much money I made, and here's the amount that I got paid for each one, and here's where the leads came in. And the sales. And so my job is in sales, I'm selling myself, but my job is in sales. And so I want to look at the metrics of, like, where are the referrals from? How much is this referral worth? How much is that referral? This bureau pitched me five times and sold me five times. This bureau pitched me five times and sold me none.
What can we learn from the one that pitched me better? So I'm looking at all my numbers, and because I put a book out this year, I made less money than I did last year. And my first reaction was like, I worked so much harder. I literally flew 110,000 miles this year. I'm not just diamond on Delta, I'm diamond on every airline. Like, I am the top, top, top. I was away a lot. And I look at it and I'm like, well, that was a lot of work for less money. That doesn't make me feel good.
My 2023 numbers are not good enough. They're good, but they're not good enough for what I did. And then I started thinking. I wrote limitless in 2018. I published it in 2019. I worked until 2021 basically on that book. Like, 2018 to 2021 is limitless. Then I wrote Wonderhell in 2022.
I put it out in 2023. I'm going to be speaking on it in 2024 and 2000 thousand and 25, 2026. I'll probably start writing the next book. So what if I started looking at my quote, unquote, PNL, not as a year, but as like, a body of work? So what if I said, okay, this year I made less money, but I'm going to make even more money the next couple of years because of all of the speaking I did, because of all of the book sales that I did, because of all the high level media, because of the work that I did to get the book on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list, because of the work that I did to get myself into this big bureau? And I think in some ways, our window for how we examine and how we determine success is too short, right?
So, like, if you looked at, I was on the road 250 days, but what did that get me in the following year and the following year in terms of the money, what I sold from the relationships I built, sports teams, talk about having building years, right? Reinvestment years. But I don't know that I had been doing that with my own business. And I think if you're somebody who's in sales, you want to make your weekly numbers and your monthly numbers and your quarterly numbers and your annual numbers. But what about the phase numbers? What's the phase? For me, the body of work is each individual book. But I think each of us have, like, if you're selling a product and the product has a lifespan, what if we extended the success to incorporate some of the work? Because what I talk about in Wonderhell is that each time we achieve a level of success that we didn't know we could achieve, we see a version of another one that's even further beyond.
So we want to keep growing and building, but that means there's going to have to be some investment each time to get to the next level.
Such an interesting conversation, because I was just looking at my PNLS recently as well, and this year wasn't the same as last year, but I also get to give myself Grace because this year I wrote a book and I'm publishing it in 2023. I wrote a book and it's published in 2024. And you know the time and dedication that it takes to write a book, sometimes you're laying the foundation down for new creation to come in the coming years.
Right? So if I look at my PNL, if I'm looking at this year, I think what I want to do for 2024 is, I want to say, okay, what are my goals? My goals are that I want to increase my speaking fee. I want to have a regular appointment to a national media mindset, correspondent for type thing. I want to go on x numbers of vacations. I'm now an empty nester. So, like, part of my 2023 was I want to crush this book launch. But I also want to make sure that I spend every possible minute with my youngest son, who's about to go to college, and my older son when he's home on breaks. Right. I want to also deepen my relationship with my children, with my family, with my husband.
And so if you hold those next to each other, I made less money. I spent more time building. And where I did sacrifice the money or the time, it was in service of one of these other things that I care about. Then looking at those numbers, I had the greatest, the biggest year ever. Right? So when I look at the whole picture, because I know that you wrote a book last year, it's going to come out this year. So that is investment time. Right. You might not see direct, it's not short money, but you're going to see long money from it.
And I just think as we think about our definitions of success, it can't just be bigger, better, faster, more.
Shift Your Perspective and Invest in Your Growth
Evaluate success as a cumulative body of work over several years rather than a single annual snapshot.
Recognize the value of reinvestment years or building phases in your personal and professional journey. Understand that each achievement opens doors to new possibilities, requiring continual growth and development.
Expand the concept of success beyond immediate financial gains and quarterly numbers.
Time, Money, and Lifelong Achievements
House bigger title, bigger salary. It has to be the holistic picture of how do we spend our time and what do we do. I think it was Ralph Waldo Emerson, maybe Henry David Thoreau. I can't remember which of the transcendentalists said, the price of something is the amount of time that you exchange for it. Right? The cost of anything is the amount of time that you exchange for it. And for me, I want to think more about time and money, and not just money.
If I look back at the year that I had, where I was on the road for 250 nights a year, I did earn region manager of the year. Our team successfully went to number one. But when you compare that, let's say if I'm going to compare that to 2023, I may not have made as much money. However, did write a book. That's an accomplishment in itself. That trumps to me anything that I had previously done in the past, because it's such a unique accomplishment. But also, too, I went on more vacations than I did in 2023, got to spend more time with my family, got to take my kids to California for the first time. So I like how you take that perspective and saying, let's not just measure success based off of our income, the size of our house, the cars, whatever we were grown up to believe success looks like, and to look at our life, our success as a whole, as a whole person, as an individual, looking at all areas of our life, also looking at not just one year, but the cycles that we possibly go through.
Because I think of this in the corporate world, how often do sometimes we maybe pursue, maybe we want to get promoted into a new level, but the company is encouraging us to do a lateral move. And we may feel like, well, why would I go laterally sometimes that's that investment to go upward. And so you are still having a lot of success by doing a lateral move. Even if you're not immediately going up because you're investing in the future, maybe you're getting exposed to new skill sets, new division. The organization that I worked for, they really promoted lateral moves amongst different divisions so that we could be more well rounded within the organization so that we can.
For sure. I mean, when the job I took in the. I was, I think I told you before we started recording, I was confidential assistant to the director of the office of national service. Confidential assistant is a political term for peon. I was the guy who got the coffee for the guy who got the coffee, for the guy who got the coffee. But I was in the room, I was in the big room where things happen. So I could have had a more senior job in a smaller office, or I could have had the itty bittiest little job ever in the office of the guy who was running the project. That was Bill Clinton's signature campaign promise.
So I was escorted into the Oval office all the time while that guy gave briefings. I got to see how things happen. So I learned so much by not being like, I want to take the externally defined greatest role. I do want to say one thing, though, about the sort of number one department, number one sales office. I think that there are moments in time, and it's not every day, every week, every year, but there are moments in time where you run hard at a thing. I ran hard at launching Wonderhell, I wanted to make the Wall Street Journal bestselling list. I wanted to make that list like that.
Unstoppable Grit: Navigating Sacrifices for Career Triumphs
For me, you make the Wall Street Journal bestselling list, you get an immediate bump in your speaking. Like that is just absolutely. It puts you in another level. So I threw everything I had at it and I made the list. Right. Like I did, didn't it? Wouldn't have helped me if I was a Washington Post bestseller. Fine. That's not a national paper.
People sometimes think it is because it's the Washington Post. But like, making the Chicago Tribune or the LA Times wouldn't have helped Wall Street Journal. Boom. Like, that is a different going to. If there are moments when you're like, what are the jewels in the crowns of the people who sit on the thrones where I want to sit, what are those things? Right? For me, it's the media. It's the Wall Street Journal. Like, these are the things for you. It was number one.
Nobody's going to be like, oh, I want to go work with her. She's the number two office. She's the number four office. Right? But if you're going to go for a thing, you got to go hit that out of the park because you can then eat out on being the number, like, you were number one and it cost you dearly in terms of your family time. But then for the next few years, you can eat out on the success. Right. People like the coattails of what the momentum of what that achievement is. So I do think that there are these moments in time where we have to go for the thing.
Like we have to sacrifice everything, go for the thing, but we have to do it knowing that we're doing it for a particular reason. For me, I went after the Wall Street Journal bestseller because I knew that that would get me into a different echelon of clients at a different speaking fee and being like, I am now on a list when people are looking at four or five different speakers, that I wouldn't have been on a list with Carrie Lorenz or Alison Levine or Mel Robbins or Jen Sincero if I wasn't a Wall street. They're all Wall street. Like, they have the list. I don't. So, like, there are these moments where we have to do the thing, but I think it's just important to remember, is there a strategy? What will I get for it? And what is the window of time for which I'm going to exert this unstoppable grit? To get to the place that then gives me the thing that I actually want on the other side?
So now I'm curious. Now that you've hit Wall Street Journal bestseller, what's your new jewel that you're going after?
I mean, the only reason I write a third book is if I could get to the New York Times. But here's the thing, Wall Street Journal bestseller, the Wall Street Journal list is done very specifically by numbers of books sold. The New York Times bestseller, you have to have a certain number of books sold. You have to be with one of the big five publishers, and they curate the list. So if they've never heard of you, you could sell 50,000 books. They'll just take your name off. It doesn't actually matter.
So I have to have big enough platform to get to the thing. But honestly, my crazy goal for 2024 is I want to be the mindset correspondent for some national news outlet. That's insane. I don't know if I can do it, but I think it's big.
I believe you can. I'm a believer in if you put your mind to it, and no woo woo stuff. I do believe, and if you put your mind to it, but you also put action behind it, it'll happen.
About the woo woo stuff for a second.
From Vision Board to Reality
Yeah, let's talk about woo woo.
Because I wrote about it in Wonderhelp, because I was like, manifestation is nonsense. That's not true. It turns out there's science behind it. I had no idea. Here is the science. Your brain takes in 11 million bits of data every single second, right? Like the senses we know. Smell, touch, hearing. Right? Sight.
But there's other senses. Like proprioception is like, how does my body feel in time and space? Like thermoception is. How warm is it? Right? There's, like 53 different senses. So if your brain is taking an 11 million bits of data every single second. It can't possibly process them. It could only process 50. So it's weeding out a lot of stuff. So when people are like, I want to take my family to California, and I put it on my vision board in beautiful scrolly font and I manifested a sale of plane tickets to California, I'm like, no, you didn't.
You just told your brain by actually being intentional about it and putting it on your vision board that you want your brain to pick out airfare to California. Out of the 11 million bits every second, that should be one of the 50. So that bus that passes you by with the airfare flights, you didn't manifest the bus or the sale. You just told your brain, notice that thing. So I actually think that saying it out loud and talking about it, I'm not going to manifest it from happening, but I might see or manifest from happening, but I might see opportunities that will put me in the deal flow or put me in front of the people that need to see me in ways that I might have missed before.
So let's reframe the verbiage on this then, because I'm a big believer in vision boards. So instead of manifesting, you're visualizing it by putting it in front of your face. So there's constant reminder of what you want to create in that year. Every single year, I've done a vision board, and I love how each year, in fact, this time I'm getting together, or I most recently got together with some of my girlfriends and we all got together and we talked, too. It's not even a matter of just putting things on the board, but having a group of people come together and talking about, well, why are you putting it on your board? What sparks that as a goal? Is that a family goal? Is that a personal goal? And who knows? Maybe connections could be made based off the conversations that happen there as well. And you get accountability with that as well when you do it together. But I love how each year taking things off because I'm like, wow, I accomplished that goal. I accomplished that goal.
Accomplished that. In fact, my board is actually by the end of 2023.
You ran the board.
It was there. It was great. There's still the TED talk on the list. The TED talk has still been there. It's been there for a year. So that's going to stay on there.
I can help you get that. That's easy.
Yeah, no, that's been on my board for two years. So it's been a goal and I've been working hard towards it. But other than that, it's fun taking things off and putting new ones back on or putting new ones on.
Well, it's a great thing to do in advance of your book launch because you can do what I did is like, you do it in the early part of the year where your book's coming out and you're like. Because it was so popular, people love the idea. I wrote the book, right? I mean, it's the wizard of Oz, but it's a great thing to do because then you also have video of what the book is about. So anyone who's not going to read the book, they're like, here's 12 minutes on the topic and it's a great way to spread the message for the book. So we should talk about how to get you a talk.
Yes. Thank you. So what is your 2024 in addition to anything else? In addition to being the correspondent? Because I believe that absolutely is going to happen. Anything else?
I would like to do a whole lot less work and make a whole lot more money, but no, mostly, I don't know that I've ever worked as hard towards anything professionally in my life as I did for the launch of Wonderhell. And I've worked really hard. Like, I've worked in the White House, I've launched my own business, I've sold businesses. I have worked hard. But this was. And this isn't like 110,000 of extra bonus miles they give you for sitting in first class. Like 110 actual thousands of miles that I flew this year. So I think I spent upwards of two actual weeks traveling.
Redefine Goals, Be Efficient, Make Impact!
So my goal is to, I say work less and make more money. Cheeky. But I do mean that I did so much work in this last year that my goal is now that I've sort of pulled back the slingshot to aim it really strategically so that I'm doing the work that capitalizes on the work that I've done in this part of my cycle and not do stuff that's just filling my ego, but that's either filling my pocketbook or filling my sort of future pipeline. What's the strategy? Like, why I want to be able to ask myself why I'm doing all the things that I'm doing and knowing that there is an actual answer. And maybe the answer is ego sometimes. Maybe the answer is just joy and fun and delight, but that I'm not just launching a book is a lot of, like, throwing stuff at the wall.
And seeing it's a lot of work.
It's a lot of work.
I was thinking last night, my husband and I were having a conversation, and we were talking about motivation, and one of my kids is kind of motivated by money, and I'm like, oh, I wonder where he gets that from, because I'm very motivated by money. And I was thinking about, why is there such a motivation for money in my lifestyle and for me? And it really comes down to the fact that I was raised where I didn't have a lot. My mom was a single mom, couldn't afford a lot. And I saw what my mom did, where she went back to school. She started to build a very successful career, and I saw what it gave for us. So, to me, when you start thinking about your why and what the motivation is behind it, that provides a compass and a north star as to the motivation, as to the decisions that we make, for me, it's freedom. I want the money to have freedom to make the decisions, that I want to not have to feel held up and that I can't do something, and the freedom to be able to give. I love getting involved in my community and being able to donate to charities and not even think about it sometimes to just be like, there's somebody who needs help.
Absolutely. What can I do to help you? That, to me, is the main core motivation and the why behind wanting to make money. And I think that. I read Simon Sinek's book start with your why. I felt that was very think that.
I think that we have this demonization of money, as if, like, if money is your goal, you must be a shallow person. But you know what we call the person who gives a lot of money to an organization and gets their name put on the wall? A philanthropist. Right? Like, where do you think they get all that money from? It's not from working at the nonprofit itself. They're not making a lot of money. I spent 20 years doing executive search for nonprofits, so I say this knowing, being somebody who placed people in those positions, that work is super important. And if your purpose is that you want to cure cancer, amazing. Go do that work. But if your purpose is that you want to make a ton of money and buy a Maserati at a beach house and also give money so that this nonprofit can afford ten researchers who are finding the cure for cancer, that's awesome, too.
Work, Wealth, and Why: A Deep Dive into Life's Purpose
Your purpose is just your purpose, pure and simple. In fact, when I was writing limitless, I looked up the definition of purpose. I don't want to get called out by an Internet troll. And the definition of purpose is the reason for which something is done. There's no picture of Mother Teresa or Peter. Like, it's not purpose with hire or lofty behind, like, you can have purpose. If your purpose is just wanting to make money, that's okay. Some people want to make money because they want to let their kids make different decisions than they had to make growing up.
We all have purpose. But I love what you said, that money isn't money. It's not dollars and cents. Money is freedom. It's flexibility. It's the opportunity to manifest your values every single day because you're not working five shifts, because you're right. That is so much privilege and so much luxury. And I think it's okay.
I know people who say, I believe very deeply in this cause, but I also know that I can earn a ton of money because I'm a math genius, so I can day trade or whatever they want to do. If they can make more money doing that, then I would argue that the nonprofit that they care about, the cause they care about, is better served by them making tons of money and donating. I actually think that that's important. I don't know that you're motivated by money. I think you're motivated by freedom and flexibility and charity and your own purpose. I think it's great.
Well, thank you. Because I know that a lot of times, people we do, we have this negative connotation of money, whatever the framework that we have that was told from us as children around money. And that if you are motivated by money or you want to make a lot of money or why do you work so hard? So you can make money, and there's narcissism around it. I just don't believe that that's the case. I think that people got to dig deeper and find out the why behind it.
I'm also a princess. I like 800 thread count sheets. When I go on vacation to the Caribbean, I want the ocean view, not the courtyard view. I'm a princess. I like nice things. I'm willing to work hard to have nice things. I also know that it's okay if I'm going to work really hard. I can take extreme luxury vacations because I'm not taking a ton of them.
But I need to also rest and relax and refuel and all of that. I also know that if I work a couple of extra hours during the week, I can afford to have somebody do my laundry for me, so I don't have to do that. Right. It's not my highest and best use of my time. And I think as ceos, as salespeople, as people who like our time is money, if we are spending time on things that other people can do, then we're not spending time on the things that only we can do. And your highest and best use is to do what only you can do and everything else. That's just a math problem, right? Like, if you're making $100 an hour or $1,000 an hour or 10,000, it doesn't matter if somebody can do that job for $20 or $30, you got to have them do it because you are freeing up your time, because nobody else can do what you can do.
Absolutely. I always say, when times get tough, I will do anything to keep my housekeeper, because the last thing I want to be doing, working really hard during the week is to be cleaning my house when I can be spending time with my kids. I'm already doing laundry and picking up things. But, yes, I want somebody to help that out so I can spend quality time with my kids and so that I can rest and recharge.
Yes. Because kids spell love time.
Yes. So, with your book, Wonderhell, what can readers learn from it?
So when I found myself in Wonderhell, I interviewed 100 different glass ceiling shatterers, olympic medalists, startup unicorns, everyday people like us just trying to figure out how to survive this moment, this fight or flight, butt clenching. Oh, my God, am I going to get through this moment? And what I learned when I talked to these people, which was sort of horrifying and also liberating, is that you don't get through these moments. You don't survive them. You just learn how to thrive in them. And what I learned and I talk about in the book is that there's really three ways to do this. The first is that we should embrace our ambition. We should embrace the fact that we want to pay for somebody to do the laundry. That's fine, right? We can embrace what we want to do.
We have to renegotiate our relationship with the tsunami of doubt and uncertainty and insecurity and anxiety that come at us and learn how to reinterpret those emotions not as limitations, but as invitations. And then finally, how to get comfortable being uncomfortable. Because on the other side of this, Wonderhell is just the next one and the next one, and if we're lucky, the next one after that. And so the book is sort of divided into sort of 15 emotions and stories from people who have been through these experiences and sort of tips and tricks and what they did, strategies of what they did to get through it, along with my own story woven through.
That sounds like a great book and definitely one I'll be picking up. I'll include the link in the show notes for you to pick up your copy as well while you're listening to this podcast. Definitely. It's a Wall Street Journal bestseller. We got to celebrate that. It is a lot of work and time and energy and love that goes into writing a book. So that's very exciting. Congratulations.
Thank you so much. And thank you for having me today.
Absolutely. Well, for those of you that are listening, what does success mean for you? What is your why? Those are the questions that you get to ask yourself. And until next week, be unstoppable. Bye.
