Laura Gassner Otting on Beyond Wonderhell

Intentional Performers

Laura Gassner Otting - Speaker. Author. Entrepreneur. Motivator. Instigator.

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.

Laura is 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.

Laura had a number of amazing insights during our conversation. Some of them include:

“It is amazing and exciting and humbling and wonderful when we achieve something we didn’t know we could achieve” (6:30).

“There are seasons of our lives” (10:40).

“We define success as bigger, better, faster, more, but if we’re doing that we’re always getting trapped in the ‘it’s not enough’” (11:30).

“There is an endpoint to each of our periods of hustle” (12:10).

“We need to give ourselves a little bit of expansiveness on the definition of our potential (17:35).

“I won’t take a meeting with my assistant unless she has an agenda for the meeting” (27:05).

“If the meeting doesn’t end with a “what do we do now” then everybody forgets about it and it’s a waste of time” (27:35).

“I have decided that in parenting you basically get to make one decision… you either get on their bus, or you get run over by their bus” (30:25).

“I’m a punch in the face wrapped in a warm hug” (39:50).

“I am that person, I’m just not always that person” (41:30).

“It’s really important to figure out who we are when we’re at our best” (41:35).

“I think we have to figure out who our alter egos are and all the different forms of our lives” (43:20).

“I might be center stage, but the audience is the star” (45:00).

“If all of these people are intimidated by me, I can shock them when I show some vulnerability” (49:15).

“As a leader, I think there is a real intentionality with how we set the culture, how we show up, what we look like, how we put ourselves together, the respect we show our colleagues” (52:10).

“We should just be us” (55:55).

“I’m 100% public with 40% of my life” (56:30).

“I am at my core a mother, a daughter, and a sister. But I’m also an athlete and a writer” (1:02:10).

Additionally, you can check out Laura’s website here and find out more about her book, Wonderhell, here. You can also follow Laura on Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube, Facebook, and TikTok. Lastly, you can find a link to the Limitless Life Assessment here.

Thank you so much to Laura for coming on the podcast!

I wrote a book called “Shift Your Mind” that was released in October of 2020, and you can order it on Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Additionally, I have launched a company called Strong Skills, and I encourage you to check out our new website https://www.strongskills.co/. If you liked this episode and/or any others, please follow me on Twitter: @brianlevenson or Instagram: @Intentional_Performers.

Thanks for listening.