Episode Details

In this episode we meet Laura Gasner Otting. Laura has empowered thousands through her speaking engagements and inspirational writing, including her newest book, Limitless: How to Ignore Everybody, Carve your Own Path, and Live Your Best Life.

Laura's 25-year resume is defined by her entrepreneurial edge. She served as a Presidential Appointee in Bill Clinton's White House, helping shape AmeriCorps; Was founder and President of the highly successful Nonprofit Professionals Advisory Group, which placed nonprofit executives around the world.

Through her own commitment to give back, Laura has helped build a local Montessori school, co-founded a women's philanthropic initiative, advised a start-up national women's PAC, grew a citizen-leadership development program, and completed three charity-inspired marathons—projects emblematic of her passions and values.

Laura is both an experience CEO and Guru and her advice around success and reaching your limitless potential is practical and inspiring.

In this episode we talk about:

• What Laura learnt from working in Bill Clinton's White House on a national program
• How to live with purpose
• Defining your own success rather than living someone else's life
• How find your Leadership Voice
• The four words you need to never repeat ever again

Key Quotes from Natalie Speers

Why she does what she does:

• I went from the White House to going into executive search, really, was the best and the brightest, the smartest people, the shiniest brand, who was doing this work. And I was interviewing people, and about four years into it, I was struck by this idea that even though I was interviewing people who were at the top of their game, these were leaders, they were people coming out of ... there were people coming out of the White House, there were people coming out of massively impressive, bold-faced jobs. And I was fascinated by the fact that even though they were successful, on paper, they were successful, they weren't all that happy.

• When you do search for non-profits, you get to talk about what people have accomplished and how they've accomplished it. But you also get to spend a lot of time talking about why they accomplished it. What's their purpose? Who are they? What's their calling? What do they care about? And I was so struck that there were not that many people where the what they did, matched the who they were.

• And then I started thinking about my own life also, and realising that it wasn't that way for me too. And that's sort of when I had this moment of rage in this big firm and I said, "I can do this differently, better, smarter, faster. And with more authenticity, integrity and profit than this big firm." I went on and launched my own firm. And I ran that for 15 years. During that time, I had to keep coming back as an entrepreneur, to why am I doing this? Why am I here? What's the point? And in each of those moments, I would realise that I had to continue to be honest with the plan. What's my plan? Who am I? Is there a plan at all? Because when you're running your own business, you really have to be conscious of those decisions of the expenditures you make and the time that you take to do things.

On Living with Purpose and Consonance:

If you want to live a life of consequence, no matter how you define it, you have to live a life of consonance, where everything is aligned, where it's in flow, where as I mentioned, the what you do match the who you are. So this book really came out of the 20 years of interviewing thousands of people, and my own story of making specific changes, so that I could live a life that really felt like it mattered to me.

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