Welcome to Living in the Matrix. I'm Jonathan and I'm left of center.
And I'm Rich and I tend to lean a little bit more to the right. But the bottom line is,
is together we try to look for the balance of what it means to be human in today's world.
All right. Let's get started everyone. This is John. This is Living in the Matrix. I'm
Jonathan and my co-host Rich. Say hello, Rich. Hey everybody. Great to be back. Happy Friday.
We have an absolute fabulous guest today. We've got Lori Wallace and Lori is the founder and
CEO of Career Ecology. And both Rich and I have a long history with recruiters and career life and
coaching. And she has a HubSpot called Work-Life Empowerment. She mentors job seekers, but she has
this really interesting approach because she brings more than meets the eye. She calls herself a
work-life doula, which I absolutely love. And she talks about the heroes, the career hero's journey.
Lori, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but welcome. It's a pleasure to have you.
Thank you. I am so excited to be here with you both too, because we all are in this space.
And listening to your prior shows, I know that you're always getting to the center of things,
into the heart aspect, the working soul. I mean, we're going deep and that's where I exist as well.
So, so excited to be here with you. Thank you for the invitation.
So give our listeners sort of an understanding of your background so they know the professionalism
and history, because you bring a ton of history to this conversation. Yes. Thank you. You know,
interestingly, I have one foot. It is firmly planted in the past in the corporate world.
I was an executive in banking and I was responsible for selling home equity line credits across the
United States through telemarketing. Do you remember getting those calls? Oh, we don't quite the same
way anymore. This is all pre-cell phone, you know, all of that. But I learned at that time,
what was involved with bringing trust or trying to cultivate trust between strangers.
I was developing these scripts and I was interrupting people's dinners. So kind of
started there. And then here's what happened. You know how in life you have a big crisis and it sets
you on the path. It kind of moves you over. With the Twin Towers on that September 11th,
I was eight months pregnant and was really went into my animal state and practically birthed my
child in the spot. In fact, there were a ton of women who ended up in the ER that day. It was
really overwhelming, you know, to that deep body and that horror of the whole thing. And what ended
up happening to me is I was laid off once I had my child, because we went through an economic,
as you call it, like a downturn. So I was laid off in my role, you know, experiencing that with a new
baby. And my health kind of went crazy with some autoimmune. And end of the day, I looked at my
husband and I said, I'm switching careers. I'm getting out of this corporate thing and I want
to practice radical kindness. And my husband said, interesting, you know, what career path or track
might that be? And as luck would have it, my recruiter had called me for another financial
services role. I told him I was shifting. He ended up recruiting me to be a recruiter.
Now, here's the deal. Most recruiters out there are salespeople. But there are some of us that do it
because we know that work, health and love are the three parts of that stool that each needs to be
really strong. And I knew when he talked to me about recruiting, that I could be that one that
listened, that created neutral space for dreaming, that people could cry to, vent to. And so I moved
my family to Oregon and I said, I'm here, let's do this. And I start working for this organization,
quickly found out that it was all about the bottom line and sales. I was clocked to keep my phone
calls to six minutes, you know, yada yada. So I quit and I started my own agency in 2005 to
transform head hunting into human connection. And I flooded it with feminine values that aren't
always welcome in business, like patience, empathy. In fact, I almost didn't even get that first job
because I scored too high in empathy, apparently. But it's really, really worked for me as a health
care recruiter. Now speed that forward to 2016. I'm doing my recruitment. I'm learning about humans.
I'm experiencing their trauma, their joys, their triumphs, everything in between. And then 2016,
the election and everything that occurred with culture shift, climate and COVID. And I saw people
break down and I just saw their overwhelm and their sense of lack of power in their life.
And that's when Career Ecology was born. And it is a hundred percent about empowering individuals
through authentic relating and reminding people and showing them that you're much more resilient
than you realize, that it really is about awakening heart mindfulness and not leading from an ego
that thinks it's all about performance and competition. And every moment you think you're
not good enough. The heart really is truly sovereign and it intuits and it knows and it
connects with the net of attraction. And that's what I'm doing here quite specifically for job
seekers. So that's the arc right there. Laurie, I'm gonna, so sorry, Rich, I'm gonna dive in here
with the first question because you absolutely captivated me with that idea. I have been recently,
I talked to Rich about capitalism all the time and growing up, there was a moment of greed is good
and the shareholder capitalism came into play where everything is about shareholder value.
And we living the journey of 40 years of that shareholder value. And I think that era is ending.
The greed is good, capitalism is ending. And that is what shareholder capitalism will not allow for
love to enter the conversation. They will not play in the soft skills because everything has to be
hard. And I love what you're doing because I think it's coming on at exactly the right time is the
era shifts. People are now waking up and COVID completely obliterated the old idea. It gave
people a year to absolutely pause neurologically and you showed up. What do you think about that
shareholder capitalism to something different idea?
Love that you brought that. Yes. Okay. So are you guys both familiar with benefit corporations,
B-Corps? Yes.
No.
I am.
Yes. So this is a movement that is much bigger in Europe and it should be bigger here, but I think
the time is now and I'm actually part of the local. And what it is in California, there actually is a
designation of benefit corporation and you file as if you're an S-Corp, all of that's the same,
but you actually set yourself up with the state and say, our obligations are to our stakeholders,
for sure our shareholders, but also to our employees, to our community and to our
environment. Now you cannot be sued by your shareholder if you made a decision that was
good for your employees and slowed down revenue a little bit because you can define it.
Consolation.
Yeah.
Right. And so it's really freeing for CEOs because how many times have we seen CEOs try to make the
right choices and get booted? Even the whole thing that was going on with chat GPT, somewhat was even
involved with doing the right thing with AI coming forward and wondering how can we responsibly
bring this to the world because it could change everything within a year and we don't know what
is capable of. And here was a board trying to do the right thing and all this got kind of confused.
So it really helps when there's a designation, a legal designation that allows you to operate
in the way that you just described there, Jonathan. So yeah, I'm all for it. And as I grow,
hopefully as a company, I will be establishing myself as a B Corp for sure.
Awesome. Well, I tend to be the more of the polemicist in the room,
Laurie, and I lean a little bit more to the right and Jonathan leans a little bit more to the left.
Yes.
And he's done such a great job in his whole life of leading with his heart and I've led with my
head and I'm trying to bring the heart more into the equation. But one of the things that I noticed
that came up and maybe this is not a perfect example of a B Corp, but one of the things that
everybody in this room probably recognizes is there were these videos of people that would go
to work every day, let's say at Twitter and you've got a person, they wake up at nine o'clock in the
morning, they go to the gym, they go into the office, they see their friends, they get their
latte, they take a meditation break, they do a little bit of work, 30, 40 minutes, then they go
grab some lunch, then they meet up with their buddies, then they have a little bit of a
meditation or whatever, a little bit of snooze, then it's four o'clock and they go home.
And then after Elon takes over, 75% of the people are taken out and you're left with 25% and it's
as productive as it was prior to those people being there. Now, that's probably not a fair
comparison, but the devil's advocated me once to understand, is it actually, can you really go
fully all the way over to one side or does it still have to be some kind of balance where there's
still some shareholder value and at the same time, you're doing the good for the order of what you're
trying to accomplish? Absolutely. You have to have both. The balance is so critical between the head
and the heart. And I think part of what I'm hearing too, as we discussed this, is that it was swung so
far and so hard to headspace that we're trying to bring in now compassion and respect some
nurturance. And so what do we have here? We have Gen Z coming in with those types of expectations.
And it feels very overwhelming and quite abrupt to business owners. They don't know how to talk to
some Gen Zers. They don't know how to manage this. And when I'm coaching them, when I'm coaching the
leaders, I just say, this is all part of the whole. This is part of how even 4.5 billion years of
evolution in the natural world, this is how it works. That you can have a new dynamic and that
environment now has to make sense of it. And there might be a little bit of a sense too of things
being kind of overwhelming or maybe even going in a bad direction until nature comes forward and
says, oh, if you've watched the movie, The Biggest Little Farm, which is a spectacular film about
this idea of biodynamic, the idea of diversity and cooperation in the middle of the movie,
this beautiful farm, which is a reawakening ecosystem that is successful based on the
principles of nature. No monocropping here. We've got all different sorts of plants and
really, right, everything. You got to have animals and everything. At one point, the snails almost
take down all of these acres in four years of all the success that they've done. But what
happened was as that was growing, well, it was the ducks that love snails, they came in and they ate
something like a hundred thousand snails in eight days. So nature quickly adjusted itself.
French ducks. Escargot.
Escargot, exactly. Completely escargot. So, you know, I visited, I was saying to this you earlier
before we got on to our show here, is that I recently visited this farm and there's a lot
for us to learn from nature, really from a social context, from environmental, from sustainability,
engineering. And I did ask the farmers, John and Molly, what is the farm teaching us this year?
And they said, you know, we have learned that the lesson is stay curious and go slow.
That is not aligned with capitalism.
Yeah. Yeah. You need, we need predictable numbers and really that's the GE way. I think the whole
shift that was so, so far to the right was really led by GE. GE created a Six Sigma program and
figured out they could continually adjust their head count every single year as a rotation.
Intel started top bottoms with the bottom 10%, lop them off. That's just the GE way. All that
came from Jack Welch because he realized you could essentially manipulate the markets so that it just
kept going up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up and up at the expense of people.
That to me was why it's, and that is the thing that I think is missing here is I think employees
I think employees should be first in terms of the dynamics. You take care of your employees first
and then shareholder value will almost always show up. And that's what's gotten lost. Like,
I don't want to throw, nobody wants to throw out capitalism. We want to throw out the approach
that says the shareholder comes first because when you do, you don't have a heart connection to the
people that are creating that possibility. Well, Jonathan and Laura, you might even be familiar
with this, but do you know what Yvonne Chouinard just did with Patagonia? Oh, well, he's a B Corp.
Yeah. Okay. He's a B Corp. Yes. Please. Okay. So everybody in this audience probably knows
Patagonia and I live 10 minutes away from their headquarters and I've followed them and the brand
loyalty and the things that they've been doing in terms of sustainability in the Patagonia region
of Argentina and the actual mountains and all these things. Now he did one thing completely
different. He literally created its own. So it's not a nonprofit anymore, but you're saying it's
a B Corp. Can you, do you have any more details about how that's actually working in function
for our audience to understand in a real life example? Yeah. So, you know, not only Patagonia
is a good example, but Ben and Jerry's is a B Corp as well. There another one. Yes. And one of
the originals really within this experiment, which is going really well. And you know, what
Patagonia has done is, you know, they had all this, they have all this wealth. They are, you know,
such a significant brand is that there was a decision. The board came together and stakeholders
and shareholders and they all came to get, not shareholders so much because they didn't have
that. They were independent, private, but they came together and said, what do we do with all
this money? Do we go pro, do we go public? Is that what it's expected? Is that good for us and for
the land and for our employees? They looked at all their options and ultimately, I know I probably
won't say this exactly right, but they decided to make Earth the singular shareholder. And,
and said that they would create this foundation and other ways that they could go ahead and
support anything going on in the world and all those that are also trying to support Earth.
And that was so exciting that when he put out that letter, he was invited mostly throughout
Europe for invitations to receive an award, to give a speech that he, I heard this from a friend
of mine who has actually worked with him for years and is a personal friend because I asked if I could
meet him. I wanted to have so inspired. And she said, Lori, he has come home and he has gone into
his room and closed all of his shutters and curtains and he's napping. This was the, the
impact, like the impact that he made. And the world was so grateful to have somebody at that
level to make that courageous of a choice that he opened the door for others to try to do it.
So it really is an opening. These are the roaring twenties. We can take capitalism,
we get to take democracy, we get to take everything and make it better right now.
Yes, Lori, I'm in user experience. My entire job is to make products better. So I'm a product
designer. And when I started listening, because capitalism is essentially an experiment and it's
gone so far off the rails that it, I constantly ask myself, what is it going to take to sort of
right the ship? And I think there's a slow diversion happening, but I'm looking for that
black swan that'll wake people up. And I think one of those possibilities, like you talked about is
Gen Z is coming in with a very different mindset. And I have seen over and over, and it's not like
here smattering, there's mattering there. I've heard a lot of Gen Z basically saying,
I'm waiting for people just to say, let's not go to work today. Because if an entire generation
stops working the traditional way, that is going to be devastating to the economy. You know,
we think it will. So, oh my gosh, so big. Yeah, I think that's it. How do companies begin to engage
the heart without breaking the bank and pissing off their shareholders? Yeah. You know, it really,
it's always around values. If you set up what your key values are, like Patagonia again,
and people get attracted like bees to honey for those values, and they respect those founders
and those owners and they're communicated with, the key is that everybody's looking for meaning.
You know, if you study Victor Frankel, who was that psychologist, you know, who was pulled into
the concentration camps, his wife was killed, his family was killed, he survived. He leaves that,
and he writes down that he has a different thought or idea from Freud or Adler. He said,
you know, the main meaning is not sexual impulse. It's not power, which was Adler. He said is a deep
need for meaning. And if humans do not have it, because of the potential of our brains
and what we're capable of, we will go to something that feels meaningful. That's why you have men
flooding into the military when they have a life that is just bereft of relationship or love or
purpose. They find purpose there. You have people that will go and do everything they can to be an
influencer or to be wealthy or to be fabulously famous because that seems to bring some meaning.
And so there's this, you know, ultimately we go to violence and we're seeing a lot of that right now
because what gives you a sense of meaning more than death or near death? So if you as an employer,
what you're doing for the world, what the product that you have or the service,
and you can convey the meaning that it has for others and for the employees,
and create a set of values around that, people will come work for you for 15 to 20% below market,
if not for free. Here's the thing. They'll produce 50% more human productivity when appreciated
is it's, it crushes every other team. It's the one thing when you bring appreciation to your
employees. So I'm a leader of a couple of people in my team and all I do really is appreciate them.
I constantly tell them they're doing amazing, even if they're not. And guess what? They end up
making it more amazing. They always rise to my expectation rather than fall to my condemnation.
And I think that's what missing in a lot of organizations. Like, let's go back to Twitter,
which is Rich's example, is this, I think Elon went a little too far because he, he, he's basically
the exact opposite of an empath. He has almost no connection to his heart. Fair. And in doing so,
he missed out on all the creativity that has happened in Twitter. Twitter was an amazing
organization. It was almost to be corporate, it wasn't. And, but it was as a culture wise. Now,
it was an example of going so far way too far over on the right side towards the heart that
everyone can agree with. The, Williamson or Isaacson documented in Elon's book. So Twitter,
Elon took it all the way to the other side. It's, there is a balance in the middle that I think has
to happen for any organization because it's not just about, cause Elon is about productivity,
but you get better productivity when you take care of your people.
I do believe that he also though fair, fair to be spoken is that he brought up a lot of
corruption. There was definitely a lot of things and people that couldn't even have any voice,
whether you like it or not. First amendment, you know, allows you, you know, to be able to,
freedom of speech was completely shut down. So I think you're right there. He probably,
what he did is he threw the baby out with the bath water, right? But one of the things I wanted to
go back to is not only does Patagonia as an employer, meet the employees and help them be
productive, but they have a consumer base that's willing to pay more for something that's
made from recycled trash and plastic bottles. So you've got a great product now that's the
margins are high and you can spend $800 on a jacket and ski pants and you're doing it because
you're loyal to the cause. You know that it's going to be effective in the outdoors, but at the same
time, you know that the margins are probably really good for the same thing to be reinforced
again and again and again. And that brand loyalty, I think is absolutely incredible.
Well, that's like, so a couple other companies that are on the, on the B list include, um,
Athleta, which we've probably heard Tom shoes. Tom shoes basically created a product that cost
about five bucks, but he based his margins on giving two pairs away. And that's just smart
business. He, he, he, his was a great marketing campaign. And I remember when he came out,
but it's always going back and, uh, reaching that point where you say our employees are the most
important thing. And when we do that, the second layer needs to be customers. Cause like you said,
Rich, when you create an amazing product, you want to support it. And if those two happen,
then shareholders make a lot of money. That to me is a theory. And we're so out of balance,
given AI and what we know about human productivity, if we would write the ship, we would be able to
create, um, amazing new amounts of productivity because people want to show up for work.
I do have to mention something really quickly. Unfortunately for, um, Tom's Blake Mycoskie, um,
sold half the company to Bain capital as they were my customer. I brought them on to LinkedIn
back in the 2013s, 14s, 15s. And, um, a lot of people were absolutely devastated because I don't
know what happened because he expanded into eyeglasses as well as coffee. In addition to the
original shoes that he had and everybody loved it. We were all there. We'll take off your shoe day.
And then I'm seeing him come in and talk about a PR disaster. There was a, there's a video of him
in an Avis commercial. He shows up in a suburban as the only person driving to go visit, let's say
a customer. So rather than showing up in a Prius or something, some ride share, he's driving as an
advertisement for Avis, the only guy in an eight passenger, you know, suburban that's getting eight
miles to the gallon. I'm like having to mortgage Roy, please somebody do a PR for this guy. But,
um, anyway, it's funny how it goes, but Lori, I wanted to pivot back to you because we're
talking about kind of these global perspectives. I'd love to hear, um, specifically how you're
helping out individuals go through their day to day, um, either through a layoff or some kind of
trauma or through pattern, Matt leave, and then maybe, um, highlight what we talked about earlier
with that video. And so tell us a little bit about how you're getting in the weeds and helping out.
Um, I think you're stop, you're doing that as well, right? Are you, are you helping individuals as
well as, um, okay, great. Yeah. So career ecology, um, I think it's a, it's a, it's a
career ecology, um, in this masterclass is all about, um, empowerment through authentic relating.
And you, what I find, I think it also goes to the organizations is that, you know, what do you really
care about? What are you really all about? If you can touch into that and you can express that,
then we can find that an ecosystem integrates well. You know, we would, if you look out your window
right now, I'd never want to see, you know, maybe a bee that's jealous of the hummingbird because it
can't fly as high. So it's just going to sit in its hive and eat honey and be all depressed and,
just do that. Thank goodness in nature, every single being an aspect of nature is all about
living vibrantly into what it is and what its gift is and what it brings. I have found as a recruiter
and now as career ecology is the founder of this is that people, especially in our country, if you
are an introvert, that you have a harder time interviewing, getting hired, and maybe even growing
in your role. I am an extrovert. I am married to a deep introvert. I would say he is Charlie Brown
level introvert, okay? A melancholic cynic as well. And he is my soulmate and I love him. He
has showed me so much of the value in those that are looking for danger. Maybe they're the ones in
the meeting that says, that's not going to work. And here's why. And people are used to here in
America. We're like, we don't want to hear that. We're just going to rush forward. But there's this
whole process of going slow, staying curious. This is where we're bringing in some of the feminine
aspects about making really good choices where in a sense we're putting down a taproot.
I think about the experiment that happened years ago, I think it was in Nevada, and an organization
made a bio bubble or kind of a biosphere and they wanted to make like a garden of Eden.
And they planted all these trees and all these ferns and everything. It was perfect. And then,
and there was like, there was no fungus, there was no problem. You know, everything was thriving.
And then they went ahead and took off the cover and the slightest wind blew and the trees fell
over. It turns out that they didn't have a chance through the normal sort of back and forth and
crisis and learning and growing together that they didn't establish a root structure. So what
I'm doing when I work with individuals is I'm saying, let's go deeper than just this surfacey
thing that unfortunately happens a lot in this country of you're successful if you're, you know,
beautiful and rich and on top of it and kicking it and crushing it. You know, who are you? What is it
that you really care about? What can you really bring? And so we start with this responsive resume.
I used to call it feng shui resume. Do you guys know what feng shui is? Do you know that term?
Okay. Some people are like, what? You know, and it's ancient Chinese. It's this idea
that wind and water can move through a room, in this case, through a resume. If it moves through
unobstructed, then you're going to have, you're going to be rewarded really with just, you know,
all sorts of prosperity in many, many different ways. And so the first thing I do is I guide people
back intimately to themselves and they write their own resume under my guidance. Let me tell you
something. This is not easy for people. They are used to outsourcing that they don't want to look
at themselves. They're not sure what they're going to see. And they have spent their whole time
running and chasing to try to make money that they've even forgotten all the good stuff that
they've done. So we stop, they have to take a breath and they have to work with me and they have
to come back into relationship with self. And that's the beginning of it. And that is really,
one man just told me it was the hardest thing he's ever done. He's in his mid fifties now.
He's been a CEO, completely forgot all his value because now he's into the age of his own concerns.
And just to take, it took him four months to get through it and he's a changed man. You know,
he's lit up through a resume. That's what it can do. It's kind of cool.
What is your outcome for your clients that you work with? What is the sort of the promise of your
organization?
Yes, it is success infused with wellness and infused with wellbeing. You don't have to suffer
it need not be a complete take down of your mental state of your financial situation.
If we can, we've been talking a little bit about left brain, right brain, masculine, feminine.
We want a union of all of this. The problem is that we get all separate, right? And we want this
gorgeous, sexy, passionate, you know, come back to each other kind of union. And so when I'm
helping people to reclaim their heart intelligence and I say, basically my phrase is that we need to
be part of our life. And so, basically, my phrase is that, you know, when your mind intelligence
bows to heart intelligence, then life harmonizes. But the heart is the poet in the corner of the
room. It's the quiet introvert. The ego is the extrovert that really takes off... Ego is Elan,
right? And then we have, we'll have the introvert that might be the, somebody that's working in
the ballet or art or something, or some sort of art infusion, or something that really does
We always need to have that meaning and that soulfulness. So people come back to themselves.
I had one gentleman who I was helping who had gone six months. He's a software engineer, brilliant.
He was interviewing, not getting chosen, interviewing, not getting chosen. He got to the
point where he stopped showering, stopped hugging his kids. He stopped taking any necessary meds
that he was on. He became extremely depressed. And I took him through and taught him the truth
about interviewing. And I said, this is not a moment of performance, whether or not you're good
enough. This is a moment of human connection. This is a moment of service. And I want you,
and I'm going to teach you to interview from the place of how can I help you know me?
And then even if that person on the other end is a bully or they're very shy, not good at this,
or anything kind of happens, it seems like a huge distraction that normally would pull you off your
game. When you're interviewing from that place of service, then you lean in because your mind is
saying and your heart is saying, oh, this is odd. This requires my assistance. So we get away from
the ego, which does a lot of damage when we're trying to meet someone new, because it's all
performance. I love that process. When you're in that funnel, and I believe that's how you
differentiate, there's an intentionality and that heart comes through and there's nothing to deny it.
Right? When you're truly intentional and your heart and mind is aligned and you're having these
conversations or you're having these dialogues, I think people can feel that. However, I've got
some really good friends who have been out of work for a year. We're talking really good salespeople,
some of them who I've worked at LinkedIn, another gal just got a job after getting laid off in
October and they've sent out hundreds of resumes, applied for hundreds of jobs, barely gotten a
response back on one or two and had a handful and they're really in a despondent state. So where do
you, let's say you're in that top of the funnel where you're still just trying to get something.
Yeah. How did you have a similar, tell us how you suggest my friend go through that process and what
to do? Yes, I'm so appreciate that you brought that up because what part of what I'm teaching
through Career Ecology is not only the authentic relating, so really that resume, the linear style
is from the industrial age. It's like, okay, you're a widget, you're a widget. So I use Fengzhuo
resume allows you to shine and show up in a really interesting way that hiring managers need to see.
There's the mindful interviewing, but here's the thing. There is this process that I call the
dynamic search and I'm using the word dynamic from the farm. But what I'm saying to people is
you want to create a vibrant farm. You cannot plant just one seed and expect that the environment
and that the soil and that everything else that the rest of the beings kind of in this farm want
or need and what's going to happen. It needs to be diverse crop. So these, this couple that did
this farm, they said, oh sure, we'll come up with eight different stone fruit trees. That's diverse.
And their consultant said, that's a joke. He said, we need 80 varieties. Right now, the honeybee,
there's about, I think, 115 varieties of the honeybee. And the reason for that is that there
could be any sort of fungus or any sort of change in temperature and that one is sort of taken out
for a while. So what I guide people when they're looking for jobs and what I would say to these
people that have been out for a year is that the match between or the marriage between the left
brain and the right brain is that you need to look at this strategically to the extent that you want
to have a three-fold path because you got to collaborate with chance. You might be hitting a
wall here because you're actually supposed to go ahead and kind of gig it with part-time and start
your own company. You know, that's actually going to be aligned with your highest good. But if
you're not playing at least more than one, up to three at a time, then you're not actually using
that strategic partner, which is mystery. You know, 50% is your engagement. The other half,
everything outside of your control. You could be interviewing for that job and then boom,
somebody's cousin comes in and they get hired. But we can look at that as guidance because that
door shut because that's not actually for your highest good. So there's this spiritual almost
aspect that says, all right, bring it on. I am going to do this in a way that my left brain loves.
I have a strategy. I even have a spreadsheet. I even have data and statistics and I have networking
and I'm doing it all right, but I'm going to play with chance and I'm going to see kind of that
power of yes, where am I going to end up? And it's going to be a wild ride and just watch the show.
Because here I go.
Yeah. So you said a three-fold path. Do you actually, can you delineate those up for us,
please? Yeah. So what I'll say to somebody, I'll say, all right, first of all, what is your status
quote? So let's say it's your salesperson. Well, I should be hired for this because I've been doing
it for X amount of years and I have success. Okay. So let's make that, let's make that easy.
Let's go after that for now. Second option is slightly divergent. So let's, this is a salesperson.
Well, what if they, their divergent was a whole different industry sector or what if it was that
they decide to go into sales training instead of being a salesperson, you know, things like this.
So we go divergent. And then the third one is out of the box. So there was a woman, one time I was
taking her through her three-folds. She had her first, her second, those are obvious. The third
one, she, she was a pharmacist. Third one, she said to me, you know, Lori, I'm nervous. I'm embarrassed.
I don't want to tell you. I'm embarrassed. It's stupid. And I said, that's the point. What's on
your mind? What is that really out of the box? And she said, well, first of all, I'm going to
go to the library science. And she said, well, I'm completing right now certification in library
science. And you know, here she is a pharmacist. And I said, library science. She says, Lori, I
love the idea of knowledge and sharing, even like the quietness. She's just into it. And I said,
well, turns out that one of my best friends is the Dean of the medical library at Stanford.
Would you like to have lunch? She now works there. She is living out her dream. And the only reason
why she's doing this is because she had a three-fold path. I love this so much. Yeah. I think Lori,
what do you tell people who are taking like the true out of the bucket? Like what would you say
to them to give them the courage? Because I think a lot of more people want the out of the bucket
than the other two. I think people are tired of the sass quo. They don't want something a little
bit more meaningful. They want something meaningful. What do you tell those people? Yeah. You know, I
say, I'm going to have to teach you to say, I don't know. Sometimes I want you to be able to live with
not knowing and trusting that as you are going through and you're applying to these jobs and
these three different ways that you're going to go with the outcome. And this is how you get to
live it as this collaboration with this amazing universe. I think we get into trouble as humans
because we think we control and know everything. You know, we are in this vast universe that is so
complex right now here in California. There could be a nine, on the Richter scale, some sort of
earthquake, you know, and that can completely change the trajectory of my life right now.
I have already done all my personal work in my life through therapy, through being married to
my soulmate who I've tried to divorce a thousand times because we love each other so much. So we
fight, you know, through, you know, being my own business owner, being a recruiter is very Zen.
You have no control. So I've done all of my work now that I just say crisis is actually an opening.
Change is an opening. It's moving me forward because my end result is I want to know love.
So I don't want to be so controlled. I don't want to choke it. So when people work with me,
I say, you know what, this is this experience. It's practical and it's poetic. Your soul's dying.
Your soul needs to feel it's like it's dying for meaning. So let's bring back the working soul
and let's have a ball, you know? And so everyone who works with me, we're really going through it
that way and they have to feel the burn and they have to show up for themselves. And at the end,
they're like, I am like a monarch butterfly. I have shed a lot. I have been in the dark chrysalis.
I'm out now and I'm a little weary, but I'm ready to fly. You know, that's why it's a hero's journey.
Organizational life is decidedly masculine and it's trying to shift.
And this is where I wish organizations would really understand if you learned how to take care
of people effectively to say, let's help you find your best space. Even if you come in one way,
that may not be your best space. Like IBM, my dad worked for IBM for 25 years and their policy was
you may not be a good fit here, but you're smart enough to get hired here. So we're going to find
where you should go. That is an organization that cares about its people. They don't do that. They
actually cut that out. And it's the shift where people can find that out of the box. Like I
appreciate organizations that have a policy that we're going to lay you off, but we're going to
help you find your next journey. It's like have the sense of compassion because there's a lot of
goodwill created for both sets of employees, the ones that are exiting and ones that are staying
going, we don't work for a shitty organization. It's like when people cut out, Facebook laid off
what? 10,000 people recently and all the organizations went through a huge layoff last
year and it's getting to the point where we got to start caring about people. It's starting to happen
again. My colleague just said Google, Amazon and Citibank are all laying off massive amounts of
people, Jonathan. He did mention this today. So something's going to happen in 2024 and I think
the way you break through it is through community and these heart-centered groups that can actually
work together to find that right spot for people. Maybe we call it serendipity, but it's actually
not. It's manifesting intentionally coming through. I mean, Lori, I've had a tough go. I've been in
sales my whole life, loved ADP and LinkedIn, made lots of present clubs. And when you get in the
50s and you are in enterprise sales and you go through a challenging set of years at COVID,
you're wondering what the hell's wrong with me, right? And I've talked to lots of really good
friends who are like, Rich, we've crushed it together. We were sitting up on stage seven
years ago and I don't know if I know how to sell anymore. And I did a lot of work with Jonathan in
terms of like, I've been doing a lot of meditation and a lot of manifestation work and I had one of
the best years of my entire life actually just made club. And it's been a lot of, you know,
By 20%, it was crazy.
Yeah. So what I'm getting that though is, is like when you look at the reality of that. And so
I was trying to come up with something more specific and I don't think it was regarding the
layoffs here, but there's this place where if you open up your mind to what could be out there and
your heart is aligned with that. And then your mind is, it will come, you draw it through.
Jonathan, we talked about this kind of manifestation where you're drawing these things
to through to you. And sometimes we have to fake it till you make it. But when you actually start
spending your time with the right people and then tapping into meditation and prayer, that's when
it starts to go beyond just being a crapshoot and actually being real. And I just, maybe that's a
good time to pivot because I'm thinking about this gal, Brittany, who was on, she had hundreds of
thousands of views. She recorded her termination at CloudFlare. She was with a number of people.
She's setting this up and she's basically saying, can you tell me why you're getting rid of me?
And I loved her strength because they couldn't fire her for performance because she was saying,
I did all the right things. I had all the right activity. And by the way, I've only been here for
four months, right? Including some of the hardest times of the year to sell. So you firing me
because you hired too many people and you made a mistake budget-wise or you firing me for other
reasons. And I think she did a great job because she was being talked to by two people she'd never
seen before. So what advice would you give Brittany and or others that are going through the same
thing as she is today?
Hmm. Yeah. Boy, first of all, I just want to give her a hug. Oh, God. Just the look on her face,
just the, you could tell that she wished her manager was there. She just wished that she was
so different. It was so cold. You know, it felt so cold. And I know the people in the other end,
it wasn't fun for them. You know, when I look at that situation and this kind of goes back to what
Jonathan was saying as well, is that, you know, going forward, when people get hired, if we can
have an inspirational meeting that says, folks, we are here, part of this vast ecosystem and we're
shapeshifters. Like we don't know if supply lines could shut down tomorrow. And I think that's
going to happen. We don't know if we could shut down tomorrow and we have to stop a whole product
line, which means that we would have to shift and maybe we would have to let go of some of you.
We don't know because we don't control because we know the world is full of war right now. You
know, the whole bunch going on with all of these materials. So there's this aspect of even being a
leader that we start to help advance people to be more comfortable with sudden change. So perhaps in
here's our situation, here's our environment. We are competing. We hope we have the best, but we're
going to keep you informed. And if we have to shape shift, we've already got something like, hey,
we got Career Ecology. They're all about, you know, that'd be amazing. So I'm trying to talk
to companies. We got somebody who's here to hold and empower you politically and in every way,
practically. So we got you if that happens. But of course, this was not the case. So what she's
experiencing is something I called antagonistic mentoring. And I teach this through the work I do.
And it's something I learned from Michael Mead, who is one of my very favorite podcasters in the
space of mythology. And what he helps us understand is that those mentors in our life that help us
grow or succeed, it's really the ones that create a crisis that force us out of one place in our
life or something that we're doing or some sort of situation and forces us very quickly over here
that you can look at where you have the greatest change in growth. It's the ones that are just nice
mentors that are just kind of helping you, but you're really still a little bit neutral. Things
aren't really changing. So we can change the mindset. So the first thing that I would do with
her and people who I work with who have been laid off is we first vent through the trauma.
And we experience that like Gabor Mate would talk about, you know, that trauma. We don't want to
just develop coping mechanisms. We want it to be out because that's part of the heat. It's part of
the fire. So we want to feel that. And then we talk about this is in service to you. And I know it
doesn't feel like it, but there is something that awaits you. So after you've had your time off and
you're crying and you're still going to feel those things, let's get on with collaborating with the
mystery and let's find out what awaits you because this was so abrupt. There's definitely something
coming and it's going to be great. I've seen a thousand times. Yeah. Laurie, I want to ask you
because we talked about this before we started recording. Help us understand the career hero's
journey. Help us understand that. The modern day hero's journey. My head goes around. So I want to
say being a salesperson is also a hero's journey. It's very hard because you don't know anything.
Everything is proving yourself every day. Every day. Every day. It's like, you know,
how, if you guys have ever seen a honeybee again, that's like dying and you're like, oh, it's this
1000th flight and it's a little wings are tattered. That's what it's like to be a salesperson.
That's what it's like to be looking for a job. You're constantly out there going for the pollen,
trying to get it, you know, trying to bring it back, trying to make honey. So it is, I see it
as a hero's journey because especially when you've been let go, like in Brittany's case,
she is now thrust out and she has all sorts of emotions and feelings. So, you know, wondering
if she's good enough and what does she do wrong? What's she going to do now? And how is she going
to pay her Morgan? She has $3,000 in her credit. I'm making this up, but you know, whatever her
bills might be. So you're thrust out. And if you weren't given any help with any sort of outplacement,
again, I want it to be empowerment, then it's like you've been thrust out into this like dark woods
and you don't know, like, you don't understand where food is. You don't know where water is.
When it gets dark, you're afraid you're going to get eaten. You know, and your job is to try to go
up that mountain, see a vision and find your way back to some sort of wonderful place to live.
And so I see it as primal. I see this in between job thing with all the rejection, all the ghosting
that it touches someplace deep down where we're afraid of dying. And our modern world has progressed
much faster than our nervous systems. I get ghosted by a friend and I'm out of my mind,
like worried, you know, I'm very sensitive. So ghosting to me goes very quickly back to a
primal fear. And I get pretty bitter. Some people not as much, but it really does affect all of us.
And so it is a hero's journey where if we can, if you imagine like the round table, you know,
Arthur and all of that, those nights were sent out on their quest with an Excalibur, with food,
with a trusty horse, you know, whatever they needed. And off they went into the treacherous woods
and they found their way. And by the end they were more resilient and they were heroes.
So I show up for people and I say, I got your granola bar. I got your compass. I got your water
bottle. You're the one who's climbing the mountain. I'm not your coach. I'm actually your Sherpa.
And I'm going to help you get there. Cause I know you haven't been here lately.
And it's not as scary as it looks. Yeah.
What do you tell them when they want to turn back down to the mountain or down and go back down?
Sometimes, you know, since they are the ones that are in charge of that, I have people that work
for me. Yeah, I'm the Sherpa. And so they, if they want to go and sit at the bottom of that mountain
and they need to sit there and feel the feels, they got to sit there and I will hold space for
that because part of this process is really facing something in yourself. And there may be, you know,
for women, especially, um, it was only a couple of years ago when I coach women that are going
through a job process and you know how you have to fill out that, that survey sometimes like that
psychological survey to see if you fit the culture. It was only a few years ago that I would say to
women, fill it out as you are, as your masculine and feminine self. In the past, I would say,
fill it out as your work self, your masculine self. You can't be all in. Um, so sometimes for women,
I find that they sit at the foot of the mountain because they're not sure it's okay to be upset.
They're not sure that they can have access to their rage and to their emotion, to their power
sense, to their power center. And so sometimes it's just almost sitting in there on the fire
and then realizing, I got to go. I can't just live here. You know, there's this, it's time to
change. So I'm very patient with people and very, very compassionate, but I nudge them though. I
just say, Hey, it's almost the new year. You want to get that resume done? Let's get that one out
there. You know, gotta be encouraging. So Laura, we have time for about two more questions and
I'll take the first one, Rich, you can set yours up. You, uh, have this idea of the trauma of
interviewing that no one is talking about. What is that? Yeah. Ooh. You know, when I told you a
little bit ago, I spoke of the gentleman who had six, it was six months of interviewing and all
these nodes got to the point. And, and there's, there's so many people I can think of through the
years that they'll get to the interview and they come forward already assuming that they'll be
rejected. And it's so traumatizing because what's going on is actually self abandonment,
which is the worst kind, right? The worst kind. So you know what happens? I have come to know,
and this is something similar because we're all part of the same world and culture. So have you
both, either one of you ever had the dream that you missed an exam in college or you even forgot
you had the course? Yes. That scary dream. Yes. I get teeth falling out and sometimes flying dreams
and sometimes, um, like falling dreams off cliffs and stuff, but I've not had the forgetting about
the exams. Not yet. I've had the teeth one. Oh, that's a, that's a really gnarly dream.
I've had that one. Oh my gosh. So typically what people unconsciously or sometime consciously say
to themselves the night before an interview is this is this negative ego voice. And the first
message is, uh, dude, you know what? You've been so busy. You haven't had time to prepare.
You're going to make a fool of yourself tomorrow. Just no, don't do it. You know, cause the ego
wants you to actually quit it. It doesn't want you to go into a situation where you might be
rejected. So the ego's like, no, no. The second message of the ego is, and by the way, you're just
not good enough. So just quit. So I actually have people the night before interviews. They are a
part of their work with me is that they say these two positive mantras out loud as the last thing
before the lights go out. And I want it out loud because it needs to vibrate through the body. It
can't just be like a passing cloud. And so the two positive mantras, the first one is I am ready.
And I have access to everything I need to connect. That is a very powerful mantra because that second
part, I have access. If you just did, I'm ready. The ego goes, no, you're not. And you go, yes,
I am. No, I'm not. It's just an argument. Um, but the truth is you do have access. You, there's so
much you can talk about. You still can respond no matter what. The second mantra is, and I'm a good
person and I bring tremendous value to this world. And that sounds like, Oh, isn't that maybe just
toxically positive? Well, it's actually based on two principles of nature, which is diversity and
cooperation. So if we don't have anybody's unique voice, then diversity is not served. And if
diversity is not served, life is not served. If life is not served, love is not served.
So I bring home to people don't care about if you're new grad and you're only 21 and you think you
have no voice or no value, or if you're 60 and you're worried now that ageism is coming into
play, all of wherever you are, wherever you bring is unique. Only you bring it. And that's what it
matters. They got to know it here first, you know? Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Well, I was coming up with
two questions and one of them was more of a funny pun, pun, you know, tongue in cheek. And that is,
how do we introduce cortisol to pregnant women instead of Pitocin to have babies based on your
9-11 example? The second one is more specific to my son and his colleagues. So he works for a
staffing agency that provides obviously people and bodies to their clients whom they represent. And
they are in the fire alarm installation side of things. They're in the AV, audio video world, like
multi, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars to put in sound equipment and lighting and stuff
for these places. And then thirdly, I think they do more security kinds of like CCTV can, you know,
which is important for security. So he's got a very limited space with these people he's talking to,
unlike what you're saying, hey, you've got the status quo, you've got this idea of a slight
divergence, or let's open up, you know, out of the box scenario. He can't provide, hey, you've been
here, you've been doing this. Well, maybe he can. Maybe he can actually say, listen, you've been used
to doing AV, go over here. So what would you suggest for some folks that maybe are living in
swim lanes that don't have as much flexibility to have the threefold path? Yeah, you know, I think
you might be surprised like that pharmacist, you know, she went to be that librarian. But of course,
it was medical. So that was the stream across. What I find is that people might be surprised that when
they're talking to a mentor or somebody like me, like a doula, and that I just bring that conversation
alive of what they love and what they do. You know, I've had people talk to me about, gosh, you know,
I just love travels so much, you know, and there's this whole concept of have you ever thought about
matching your sales to something to do with working for like a Marriott, you know, where now you get
to travel the world, especially when you have sales skills. Oh, my gosh, those are transferable,
so far, so far, so far. You know, right? That mean the sales, that you're the number one skill,
it is the number one skill you want to have in all of business. Yeah, it really is. And you know what
I'm finding? There are people that are becoming freelance salespeople. Oh, freelance. Well,
affiliate marketers buy on their own right, right? If they become more and more, if they know how to
grasp an understanding of something, they can then just be this kind of local focal point, if you
would, of additional touching points and then become, you know, very valuable in that regard,
or they can actually go into their own trade, right? So what were you gonna say, Jonathan?
No, I forgot. It's okay. Laurie, I want to thank you so much for joining us. This has been,
this is every time we say this, we said this has been a fabulous conversation. You,
what I love is your spirit in your heart, because what you're after is people. And I love that,
because at the end of the day, that is always going to nurture something good. And so thank
you for being a guest on our podcast. This has been a wonderful experience. And Rich, any final
words? Yeah, you know, what's great about this is, Laurie, we've often focused on the idea that we
bring on folks that are outside the status quo. And you do meet that definition of doing things
with the heart and tapping into things that involve Feng Shui and just, you know, just ideas of
spiritual guidance and of course, you know, right brain, but at the same time, you offered really
practical kinds of things for people that are hurting, including Brittany out there. And so
what I loved about this particular podcast, Jonathan, is we've got some folks that are just
out there, right? Laurie, they're throwing out stuff like we're, I've been to the highest heavens,
I've seen God, you know, and then we've seen others that are like, we're getting down into
more of the trenches, right? And I just love both your, you know, you this warm kind of spiritual
mother, you know, Sherpa perspective at the same time, offering real life practical solutions for
people who are desperately needing it right now. So thank you so much. Yeah, I'm going to take away
your Sherpa. That to me is the number one thing I'm taking away because I love the concept of,
I'm here to support your journey. I'm not here to tell you what to do. The traditional coaching
model tells people what to do. You're trying to nurture them to discover it for themselves. So I
love that. Yes, that's it. Bingo. Thank you guys. I've really enjoyed this. I wish that we could
just have like a whole weekend and just talk about the whole world. And I wish that we could, you
know, run it because I know we've got the perspectives in this room. I love both coming,
the left, right brain and you know, masking and feminine and conservative, liberal and everything
that was in here because we want to come back to each other. And I talked about earlier union,
there's nothing more romantic and more amazing than union and for everyone to come back,
fall in love with each other again. So I appreciate that energy you bring.
Very much. Awesome. So thank you everyone for listening. This has been again, one of my favorite
episodes. They're always so good because I think we find really amazing people. So Lori, thank you
for joining us. To all of our listeners, please comment, review. We'd love to hear from you,
suggest guests. We find a lot of our guests from suggestions. So but we will see you in a week
and have a great weekend, everybody. Much love.