Join me and Laura Posey in our conversation on the podcast, Guts, Grit & Great Business, where we talk about getting into hard places (in business and life), the power of constraints, and saying yes to less.

Biggest takeaways (or quotes) you don’t want to miss:

• Laura Posey on one of her earliest jobs: “I don’t know how to cook, but here’s what I know about food. If it’s beautiful, that’s half the battle.”
• Laura’s history in sales, and knocking it out of the park using the 80/20 rule.
• How Laura created her own system to create time, money and location freedom.
• Why “the power of the vision” is the starting place for Laura’s Simple Success System.
• Why”context switching” (and lack of priorities) is so harmful for us (and our productivity!)
• Why we pile up bad decisions after bad decisions, and the importance of having business mentors and friends in our life to help us
• The power of having a container around your day, being able to turn off work and feel complete every day.

Check out these highlights

9:30 Laura’s hike almost ends in catastrophe, and how this was a metaphor for her business.

11:15 What happened when Laura (and then her clients) started using a strategic plan in her business.

17:10 Quote: “I’m going to have to be my own boss and build a company, that gives me those three things.” (Time, money and location freedom).

19:00: Quote: “When you have to plan all of that on one sheet of paper …. you have to decide what is really important.”

21:30 The most powerful part of the transformation that Laura’s system provides.

30:56 Laura’s personal story on “killing her sacred cow” and what sacred cows may look like in your business.

34:55 Coping with and then eliminating tolerations in our life, and how hard places can kickstart our bullsh*t meter prompting us to make hard but important decisions.

37:58 How Covid is changing perspectives and priorities, another example of how we sometimes do not make hard decisions until we are forced to.

44:00 The importance of having outside perspectives, including friends and mentors in business who can help sniff out garbage in our business. (You’ve gotta hear Laura’s smell analogy!)

46:20 The different ways Laura supports her clients. (And how to transform your business in 3 hours! No Ph.D. in planning required!)

49:15 Listen to Laura walk through her Daily Success Checklist (gift linked below!)

53:12 Don’t miss Laura’s amazing invitation! (It’s so generous!)

54:43 “All the best things in my life have come from places that … felt really awful and dark and hard.” – Laura Posey

Links Mentioned in this Episode:

Laura’s gift: The Daily Success Checklist – her go-to tool for getting everything done: https://simplesuccessplans.com/daily

How to get in touch with Laura:

https://facebook.com/salesmagnet  https://twitter.com/lauraposey  https://linkedin.com/in/lauraposey

About Laura Posey, Chief Instigator at Simple Success System:

–> Check out all Guts, Grit & Great Business podcast episodes here.

Imperfect Show Notes

We are happy to offer these imperfect show notes to make this podcast more accessible to those who are hearing impaired or those who prefer reading over listening. While we would love to offer more polished show notes, we are currently offering an automated transcription (which likely includes errors, but hopefully will still deliver great value), below. 

GGGB Intro 0:00
Coming up today on Guts, Grit and Great Business.

Laura Posey 0:04
It’s actually one of the best business educations I could have ever gotten. Because, you know, franchises are so tight, their systems and processes are just dialed in. And I learned so much about the systems of business. I learned about labor planning and inventory management and all these things I just never would have learned. Otherwise. You know, I mean, they just kind of threw me in and said, Hey, here’s how you run a business full of teenagers, right? Which was just insane. You know, I mean, we do $50,000- $60,000 on a Friday night with a bunch of teenagers – it was nuts!

GGGB Intro 0:40
The adventure of entrepreneurship and building a life and business you love, preferably at the same time is not for the faint of heart. That’s why Heather Pearce Campbell is bringing you a dose of guts, grit, and great business stories that will inspire and motivate you to create what you want in your business and life. Welcome to the Guts, Grit and Great Business podcast where endurance is required. Now, here’s your host, The Legal Website Warrior®, Heather Pearce Campbell.

Heather Pearce Campbell 1:11
Alrighty, welcome. Hello and welcome. I am Heather Pearce Campbell, The Legal Website Warrior®. Thanks so much for joining us today. I am so excited about our guest. So I was just telling Laura, we’ve got Laura Posey here today. And I was just telling Laura that prior to us connecting for like a month I had, I think three different emails in my inbox from different people like hey, you need to know Laura Posey, you need to connect with Laura. And so finally and of course, the pace of life for me. I’ve also been telling Laura has been normal life on steroids during the time of COVID. And so all the extra things that I normally would have time to go do like investigate Laura, got pushed to the side, right? But Laura’s here today, we ended up joining in the same mastermind and then we got to connect and so I’m super excited to have you here. So Laura, you are an internationally recognized speaker, author and consultant. Laura is known as the simple Planning Specialist for her unique ability to simply and easily laser focus for clients to get dramatic results. That one thing right there. I mean, to me sounds like a million bucks because I feel the opposite of laser-focused with two small children always in the background of her simple strategic plan is used by over 2500 companies from startups to Fortune 100. She’s the author of How to plan your entire year on one sheet of paper and co-author with Jack Canfield on Mastering the Art of success. Laura is a graduate of SUNY Buffalo and holds an MBA from Virginia Commonwealth University. She is also as if that’s not enough your she’s also fluent in German and is currently working on her Spanish that’s I love as a former French and Spanish student when not onstage or with a client you can find a Laura traveling the world playing golf practicing the fiddle or snuggling with her rescue mother George at home in Richmond, Virginia. There’s so much I love about your bio, Laura. And when I was on your Facebook page recently, are you also a pilot? Please tell me you’re not also a pilot I saw … like, all decked out with like the headphones on

Laura Posey 3:29
I was riding on a plane, I was riding in a plane, yes.

Heather Pearce Campbell 3:33
I was like if Laura also flies small planes, I’m just gonna lose it.

Laura Posey 3:38
No, no, I was riding in the back of a vintage plane. That’s what that was. Yeah.

Heather Pearce Campbell 3:44
Oh, hilarious. Well, welcome, Laura. I’m so happy to have you.

Laura Posey 3:48
It’s great to be here.

Heather Pearce Campbell 3:50
Talk to me about how you got started. I mean, I love the clarity and the simplicity of your message. How did you get started down this path? Where did your career start?

Laura Posey 4:00
Well, it’s got we’re not gonna go all the way back to like, restaurants and cooking and …

Heather Pearce Campbell 4:04
Oh my gosh, please do.

Laura Posey 4:06
Oh gosh, yeah. So, all right, so I grew up my grandfather had a restaurant. So I grew up in the back end of a restaurant, and, you know, working, working my way from school, I restaurants are just an easy place to get a job. And, you know, I waitress and the bus tables and then I ended up in the kitchen and I was living in Santa Fe, New Mexico and this guy that I went to for a job interview and I said, Look, I don’t really know how to cook. But here’s what I know about food. If it’s beautiful. That’s half the battle and he said, You’re exactly right. I’ll teach you to cook. And so he took me under his wing and taught me how to cook in a restaurant and I ended up doing that for a number of years. When I moved to Virginia, the only cooking job I could get actually the best cooking job I could get was managing a little Caesars franchise, and it is actually one of the best business education I could have ever gotten. Because you know, franchises are so tight their systems and processes are just dialed in and I learned so much about the systems of business I learned about labor planning and inventory management and all these things I just never would have learned. Otherwise. You know, I mean, they just kind of threw me in and said, Hey, here’s how you run. You know, here’s how you run a business full of teenagers right? Which was just insane. You know, I mean, we do $50,000 to $60,000 on a Friday night with a bunch of teenagers it was nuts. But I was so I was standing in the in there one day and this guy comes in and he said, You know, you’re wasting your time here. You should be selling something, something big like cars or jewelry, and I don’t like jewelry. So but I do like cars. So I answered an ad and got a job selling cars. And then I was selling cars and this guy came In and I sold him a car and he didn’t like me. And I like him either. But his wife like me, so he called me and said, Hey, I’m a regional manager for an insurance company, you want to be an agent. And so I ended up being an insurance agent. And then I was running an agency and getting bored with that this is a theme in my life. every couple of years, I get bored. And they said, Hey, what do you think about being a sales manager? And I said, let’s do that. Right. And that was actually a great gig because I’ve always been a fan of the 8020 rule. And so I just applied that to my district I had I was managing about 60 agents at $80 million. And I just said, Look you at top 20% agents, you can have anything you want. Middle 60% you can talk to my assistant and she’ll take care of your bottom 20% leave us both alone. And, and we made the president’s club every year thing. Everything was great. And we were crushing quota and making a bunch of money and then they decided to cap our income. So when we got to a certain percentage of quota, they stopped giving those bonuses. And we hit that number generally in about September every year. And so I said, Okay, great. Well, if you’re going to not pay me, then I’ll just stop working in September, and I’ll come back in January when you want to pay me again. And they didn’t think that was a good idea. Um, you know, I’m like, I’m in sales, I need unlimited potential. And you can’t tell me that I gotta keep selling, but I’m not getting paid on it. It doesn’t make sense to me. So, um, we parted ways. And a friend of mine had called and he said, Hey, I’m starting a sales training company. Do you want to be partners? And I said, Sure. Let’s go do that. Right. And so it started off as a sales training company with a business partner and decided a couple of years into it that I really hated sales training. Because I hated working with sales teams. I was because I was back in corporate Right, I was just back in the grind. And I also decided I hated my business partner. It’s a really great guy. He’s a really terrible businessman. And he just never seemed to understand that, you know, income minus expenses equals profit and profit is what we get paid. I never quite understand that equation. And so he’d come in and go, you know, so how much are we getting paid this week? Like, I don’t know what you sell. I see what you spent because I got the credit card bill. You know, he’d come in and be like, how much we get paid. I’m like, Well, according to this, you owe us $2,000. So you’re getting paid negative $2,000. So anyway, I ran away from home, I just like hit the wall. Bleeding money. I was angry. Every day it my business partner, I was getting up and putting on a suit and doing stuff I didn’t like doing. And I was just pissed off all the time. So I hopped on a plane and went to Sedona, Arizona, right after Christmas one year, and I was like, I’m gonna go to the spiritual retreat, get my head together, I’m going to go for a hike and I’m going to figure out how to quit this business and figure out how to get out and what I’m going to go do. And while I was there, I was out hiking in the desert. I thought I was on the trail and the trail, like, started to go straight up the side of this mountain and I bought what little more than I bargained for, but okay, I’m in shape. So I start climbing, start climbing and I get up and I get, get on there. 2030 feet off the ground and I’m like, I can’t go any farther. I’m not strong enough to keep doing what I’m doing. I looked down I can’t see my handholds and footholds, too. To get back down, so I’m like, Okay, I’m just gonna die like I’m gonna. I’m gonna just fall off this thing and the sky blues are gonna get me in the buzzards are gonna get me. Nobody knows him out here. I got nothing with me, right? I got, you know, how stupid Could you be right? And so I finally I’m like, hang in there on this side of this mountain and I look over and I can see the trail. And apparently, the trail turned and I just wasn’t paying attention. And so I was able to scramble over sideways and get back on the ground and get back on the trail and, and I sat there for a second and in those moments of like, oh, and I suddenly realized, like, this was exactly what I had done with my business. I had gone on this hike, I just got up and went, I’m smart. I’m in shape. I can do it. No plan, no map, didn’t look at anything and just thought, oh, there’s a trail. I’ll be fine. And I had done the same thing with my business. I had just like no sales training, I know how to do that, run a business. I know how to do that. And I just wandered into it and no plan, no idea what I wanted to do. So I just recreated the job that I didn’t like. So that was the first time I created a strategic plan. I needed a map for my business. And I started using it everything, like changed. I came home I bought out the business partner, I got rid of the employees, got rid of the building, totally revamped everything started doing the stuff I like to do. started working with entrepreneurs, still doing sales training. But then I would start to ask them, I’d say, you know, like, well, what are you trying to build here? Like, you know, you told me you want to grow 20% Why 20? Like, what’s the goal, the big end vision here, and nobody knew. So it’s like, well, here it is planning thing. I’ve been doing and they started just crushing it. My very first client group 65%, his first year of using his plan, paid off all his debt, paid off his back taxes, took his wife on a cruise. Like, it was amazing and so caring.

Heather Pearce Campbell 12:17
Well, I mean, there are a couple things I love.

Laura Posey 12:19
Long story later.

Heather Pearce Campbell 12:20
No, but it’s great I mean, there’s so much in there. There’s so much in that story that I think people can relate to. I mean, one about how we get ourselves into really hard places, you know, to what happens when we want to do a certain thing through our business, but we don’t know how to run a business. Like we want to go do the thing, and we have to learn all this other stuff on the way right, it’s the whole Michael Gerber stuff. You are a technician. If you don’t have skills, being a manager and a visionary and this other stuff it you know, things are gonna fall apart in a big way. And I think that sounds like that was a lived reality for you for a while and I’m curious because part of the conversation that I love and that I really want to bring to people right now is this concept that sometimes when we’re in those hardest, hardest places, we make the decision that makes us right we make that decision that is the essential decision for us to actually do our best work or create the change that we need to create. And sometimes we don’t make those decisions unless we’re in that hardest, hardest place. So I’m curious about your experience of your first thought around shifting your model from doing all the things and having things kind of go haywire to really doing your first strategic planning session with yourself.

Laura Posey 13:44
Yeah, so you know, I think what happens is, is you know, as entrepreneurs were opportunists, we’re opportunity seekers like we see opportunity everywhere. I can do this, I can do this, I can do this and do this and do this, right. And we just started doing all that stuff. And you know, we get too many things going on, like, we get too many balls in the air and then we start messing stuff up, or we’re just half-ass in it, you know, it’s like, we’re just doing a whole bunch of things half well, right? Or we just get overwhelmed and we shut down. You know, we just start chasing everything and they were like, Oh, crap, you know, we, we build this big mess. And then we just decide, oh, I’m not cut out for this. And so then we do what I had planned to do, which was run away and get a job. Right? I was like, Okay. Yeah, I was like, apparently I’m not any good at this. I just need to go get another sales job. Yes,

Heather Pearce Campbell 14:39
Right.Yes. No, that conversation, I think so many people can relate to especially the overwhelming part of that picture. Oh, I’m in overwhelm. I just must not be good at this.

Laura Posey 14:50
And I think the turning point for me was sitting down and go and wait a minute. I’ve been just doing what I know. How to do which is have a job. Right? I knew how to have a job. And I knew how to run, you know the little franchise that I was in charge of. And I knew how to run my little agency. But they were still just jobs, right? Like I didn’t, I wasn’t trying to go anywhere or do anything. I was just showing up every day and doing the transactions and going out. And I wasn’t trying to build anything magic. And when I sat down and said, Wait a minute, I don’t want a job. I don’t like working for other people. I don’t want to be in that position again, where somebody can say, Oh, we’ve changed your money. Like, wait a minute, I’m succeeding, and I’m gonna get penalized for that. I don’t understand how that works. And, like I just I couldn’t understand the logic of that. I have a sister in sales.

Heather Pearce Campbell 15:58
I mean the number of times she had to go to bat for like, no, remember, I’m bringing you sales you pay me for that. I’m one of your best salespeople.

Laura Posey 16:08
Right? Right. Like even when I sell we both wind at the challenge that works. If you want to pay me just a salary, we call that customer service. And that’s not me. Yeah, like I sat down and I just was like, you know, doing this really deep thinking and going, What do I want? Like how do I really want to live? And all things aside, like what do I want to you know, I want money freedom, right? Like I want cash in my bank, but I also want time freedom. I want to be able to come and go as I please. It’s one of the things I liked about being in sales. And then I also wanted location freedom. I wanted to be able to work from anywhere and So I thought, you know, there’s nobody’s going to hire me and let me have those three things. Right? It doesn’t matter how much money I make for them, I’m not going to be able to get those three things. I’m going to have to be my own boss, and build a company that I have a job in. That gives me those three things. Because I’ve always been clear that I want to build a company. I want to build an asset that I work for that is at some point saleable?

Heather Pearce Campbell 17:32
Yeah, no. And I think there’s a big mindset shift of Am I just creating a new job for myself, especially a job where I’m doing all the things versus building a system or a business that I have a job in? I have a role in but are not the same things. There’s a big distinction between those two paths. Yeah. So in your work with folks around, I love the one sheet of paper approach. How to plan your entire year on one sheet of paper, tell me what the biggest shift is for people, when you’re taking them through that process, the biggest shift that you see from what they were doing to your simplified system.

Laura Posey 18:14
It’s I think the biggest shift is when they understand two things,, the power of the vision, right, and understanding so we make them do a life vision and a life vision calculation. Like how do you want to live? And how much money is that going to cost? And how much freedom do you need? And then let’s design a business vision that delivers that right so that we’re not painting you into a corner. And when they understand that power of really understanding what they want and getting clear on, here’s what I want, here’s how much it’s going to cost, and here’s what I have to build to get That’s a big aha moment. And then the second piece is when you have to plan all of that on a single sheet of paper. There are constraints. There are severe constraints. You can’t say yes to everything, you have to say no to most things. So you have to decide what goals are really important. What activities are really important, what projects are really important. What do you deeply care about that is absolutely necessary to get you the next step towards that vision? And how do you say no to all the rest of that? And when they understand the power of that focus and of those constraints, man? Well, I think that’s it, I think, changed dramatically.

Heather Pearce Campbell 19:49
No, I mean, from the outside looking in at what you do. I think the magic of your system is in the constraint it is in it. No, it’s in getting people To put things down on one piece of paper that probably they could not do that on their own if I were to guess most people your list is five pages long of all the things you should be doing right? Yeah.

Laura Posey 20:12
So yeah, or they are they try to pack a lot into little box like the box. It’s supposed to have one thing and then they’ll have three things and I’m like, okay, like no, no commas. No. And like one thing

Heather Pearce Campbell 20:24
no hyphenation, no abbreviation like and they’re like,

Laura Posey 20:29
Yeah, that’s it like that. That’s you get for like, that’s it, you get four and they’re like, but I have six and I’m like, but you get four So figure out which four you really care about the most You sound

Heather Pearce Campbell 20:40
like you have the persistence of my two-year-old her current phrase right now. But mom, I want it But mom, but mom, just repeat to death the thing that she’s saying or but it’s what people need to hear from you. They need to get down to the basics. So So talk to us about that. what that process looks like, like, share some of the transformations that your clients have had so that for people listening, they understand the power of your system.

Laura Posey 21:08
Yeah, you know, that thing that I see, you know, I mean, the results are, you know, the financial results are, we got story after story of people growing in 200%. I mean, like, making lots of money, and that’s awesome. Don’t Don’t get me wrong. But to me that stuff that’s super powerful is that emotional and mental transformation that that going from feeling overwhelmed, to feeling really confident and clear. And knowing like, Oh, this is what I have to do today. And when I’m done with that, I’m done for the day. There’s more tomorrow, but I can turn it off. I can close everything down and walk away and if I get it all done at two o’clock When I’m done at two o’clock, and if I want to do it all in a couple of days and take four days off, yay, me. Right? But but it’s, it’s that that sense of knowing, like, I don’t always have to be on I don’t have to constantly worry about the business. I’m not constantly having all this stuff hanging around in my head. It’s just like, Oh, well let me look at my, my plan. I know what the next thing is I got to do. And I know the thing after that, nothing after that, and they’re clear enough that I can get them done. And so watching that, that, that mental and emotional transformation, watching people just relax and feel in control again, and feel focused and feel confident and feel clear. And just know that it’s, everything is happening as it’s supposed to, they’re right on track. They’re moving forward. And, and I think, you know, it’s the chicken and egg thing and it’s like, you know, it’s sort of like, Okay, well, it starts to work so they feel better. But then you know, they feel better, which makes it work better. You know? And so it’s just this this. What is it? called the flywheel. Right. It just builds up this momentum. Yes. And it’s it’s just so much fun to watch.

Heather Pearce Campbell 23:18
Well, it’s I’m listening to your story about how people are feeling in their business and like I can speak right now. We were talking right before we went live about being a mom in the time of COVID with two little people at home and, like, I get to the end of every day, and I, my sisters and I are pretty close. So we’ll talk regularly, but my brain is like scrambled eggs, having to split my attention, you know, 49 different ways. Oh, yeah, all day long. I mean, but I think this replicates what a lot of people feel in their business on a regular day to day, you never get to turn it off. You never get to feel complete because of the way that things are going in the way that you, you’re doing things in your business really, I think mostly responding to what needs to be done rather than really clearly defined. Right?

Laura Posey 24:09
Absolutely. Like, you know, most people are firefighters. You know, it’s it’s like a daily game of whack a mole. Like email. Oh, oh, my phone’s ringing. Yeah, you know, people need to stop. Right. You know, and it is this just, yeah. And, you know, the the psychological studies show that when you have to contact switch, right, when you have to go from deep thinking to like, it takes you 20 minutes to get back to where you were, and, and it’s mentally exhausting. And so if you add to that, having to look at your, you know, there’s 12,000 things that you want to do and figure out Okay, now which 1 am I going to do now? And, and you know, constantly having to make decisions over and over and over and over, all throughout the day for some context switching on top of that, and nothing gets done. Yep. And it’s one of the things that happens a lot is I, then we call that procrastination cure. And so one of the things that happen with everybody is that you know, we’re all addicted to dopamine. I hope it means that lovely, happy chemical, we, we get a shot of it when we see something new and exciting. We get a shot of it when we complete something. So like, when you check something off your list, you get a little dope, I mean, which is why when you’ve got a big long list of stuff, you just go do the little fast things first, and you get rid of that crap, right? Instead of doing the big important stuff. And so, you know, when when you hit that overwhelm, your brain is just screaming for dopamine, right? Because we’re all junkies. You know, and we just need a hit. And so it’s like, you’re like this and then and then it’s like, Can I just go to Facebook? right and so we. It’s why we go to Facebook because Facebook gives us a novelty. Right? If we just scroll and scroll and scroll because as we’re scrolling and we’re seeing new stuff, we just constantly get little smacks of opening. And we’re happy right? It’s like a little opium den I mean …

Heather Pearce Campbell 26:25
Well and there’s that and I think for sure that’s particularly true what I find about my experience right now is that like Facebook ads to the overwhelm that I already feel like my life is kind of like ping pong or whatever you know, the Wakka Moly and adding Facebook and like on top of it, I just want to go outside and like handle a certain percentage of my phone calls in my yard you know to mean Yeah, yeah, but even then, like I did that the other day and my daughter followed me out, found her brother, Super Soaker, and then started Super Soaking me I’m sure that’s a verb. Following me around yelling Mom, don’t leave, don’t go away. Anyways, but I agree that there are things that we do just to pacify ourselves right in the midst of overwhelming. Talk to me – getting back to the conversation about the decisions that we make in our hardest places. I don’t know if you’re able to share, like some of your client experiences about what led them to you. What was the breaking point for them or the trigger point where they just said, Okay, I’m ready to do this in a whole different way. I want to work with Laura.

Laura Posey 27:37
Yeah. Yeah, it gets, it’s when they when they get to that point of overwhelming overwhelm can be a lot of different things. It can be they’re just mentally exhausted. They’ve just been working and working and working and it’s not working. The business isn’t growing. They’re maybe keeping their head above water. In some cases. They’re underwater. Right, they’ve been putting a bunch of money into the business, but it’s they’re not getting the money back out. And so they’re just trying even more things. You know, they’re like, oh, Facebook chatbots or this or that, you know, they’re just going getting even more chaotic, which is making it worse instead of better. Sometimes that overwhelm looks as it did for me where they go, maybe I’m just not cut out for this. Right? Maybe I need to just go get a job. Right. So they’re at that point of, I think I’m just I need to quit. I need to stop doing this. Maybe it’s me. And it’s okay. I mean, a couple of every now and then it is that, like, there are times when I say to people like that, no, not a fit, you should go get a job. It’s who you are. And it’s okay. Right? Just it’s okay to have a job. Jobs are not bad. We need people with jobs. But it’s always that sense of the things I’m doing are working and Sometimes it’s they’re stressed about time they’re exhausted. Sometimes they’re, they’re stuck, right? They’re like, I just get up and sit at the desk every day. And I’m pedaling the bicycle, but nothing’s happening. And sometimes it’s just flat out money. They’re like, I’m just not making what I want to make. You know, as I said, a lot of times, you know, they’re making a living. But, you know, they’ve got $500,000 dreams, and they’re making 50 grand, and they’re paying the bills, but that’s it. And they’re working their butts off. Just do that,

Heather Pearce Campbell 29:36
That yeah, that part of the story is so painful. Our mutual friend Jay for the set he teaches and I’m forgetting the name of his particular teaching on this, but he teaches this concept about like, folks who get stuck in the trap of making just enough to get by that keeps them in the game. Yeah, but their skill level, they’re not going to the next level to actually create the thing that they want. Really want to be creating I don’t know how to change it and I really wish I remember but this concept of what you’re talking about is like they’re on the treadmill or in the little rat mobile or whatever and they just can’t go anywhere. They can’t take it to the next level.

Laura Posey 30:14
Yeah. And they know they need to do something different they just don’t know what and that’s where the planning is so powerful because it you know, we’ve all heard you should work on your business not in your business right. And in it is the ultimate working on your business. It is stepping completely out of it. And looking at absolutely everything and saying, okay, what’s really valuable here and what is junk that I need to let go of, and we kill all the sacred cows, we clean it all out and I,you know, I have a personal story on that I was using this piece of software for 12 years was our, our CRM, our marketing automation we used to, and we were good at it. We were really good at it. People were like, ah, how can you use it? It’s so confusing right now. And we got it down. But what I realized was that over those 12 years, we had started bolting on all of these other things to make it do what we needed it to do. And you know, it’s like, oh, we need a membership platform. So now we’ve got membership software, and oh, then we wanted to use this payment processor. So we need another piece of this and then we need some different reporting. So in the event, and I just hit in, but it was always the sacred cow. Right? We just made excuses for it. It was like oh, well, it’s the devil we know. Right? And I just freakin hit the wall a couple of years ago is going through a lot of really hard things. Personally, my partner had pancreatic cancer and was dying and was trying to, you know, do As my team was running things mostly but there was stuff they couldn’t do. And I had to go fix something one day and I went in there and I was just like, this is ridiculous. This is just baling twine and duct tape and screw it. And so I called my assistant and they say, okay, in the next 30 days, we’re moving to something else. I don’t know what I’m going to figure it out. But we are throwing this crap out and we are rebuilding from scratch. So we threw away 10 years or 12 years of marketing campaign automation, we rebuilt everything from scratch. And it’s been bliss. That’s amazing, right little bumps, you know, learning curve bumps in the road stuff like it’s new stuff doesn’t do the thing that this old thing did. And it’s like, Yeah, but we don’t really need to do that. Like we used to do that, but it’s not necessary. Well

Heather Pearce Campbell 32:56
And that concept, I mean, killing the sacred cow. Like You sit here, I’m thinking to myself, Oh my gosh, what am I, what am I hanging on to because I just think there’s no alternative or you work around it, or this is just how it is. And I’m sure you’ve seen a lot of sacred cows. Give us a few examples of what those look like for people so that for folks listening, they can go Oh,

Laura Posey 33:19
Yeah, so sometimes it’s the stuff that you’re using, it’s processes that you’re used to doing that are inefficient and horrible. And nobody should ever be made to do these things. But you’ve just been doing it that way. So you know, it’s fine. A lot of times, it’s a product or a service that you’ve been selling for a long time, that’s actually holding you back. Right? You just keep pushing on and pushing on and you’re like, oh, if I just get the copy, right? Or if I just if I change the button color on the landing page or you know, whatever. I just need better Facebook ads, whatever, you know, it’s like, and it’s like no, the thing that you’re selling It just isn’t sexy enough. People don’t want it enough, you need to just stop. Yeah. And it may be something you love to deliver. But if people don’t love to buy it, it doesn’t matter. Or it may be something, you know, I’ve seen that people like, I put so much time and energy into that. And I’m like, yo, doesn’t mean it’s good. It just means you put a lot of time and energy, it doesn’t mean people want it. And so sometimes you have to just throw that stuff out. I mean, I’ve got mountains of stuff. My clients have mountains of stuff that just stopped doing.

Heather Pearce Campbell 34:37
Yeah. How getting personally over that hurdle of just looking at it one day and being like, Okay, I’m done with it. What was it just a level of frustration? Was it the fact that you had all this other pressure in your life? Yeah,

Laura Posey 34:50
Yeah, I mean, it got back to that point, as you get to this point in your life poor, it’s like, it’s suddenly one of my friend who’s a therapist. And he called it colorations. Yes. He said You have all this stuff that you tolerate. And then you just get to a point where suddenly, you know, it’s the straw that breaks the camel’s back. And you’re like, I’ve had enough. I can’t anymore. And all those tolerations have to go away. And you know, sometimes it’s outside forces that cause that right. You know, when my partner got sick, like, we didn’t see that coming, but it just everything got hyper-focus really fast. Like there just was no space bullshit, right? Yeah, that I’m so sorry to hear that. And, yeah, for anybody who’s gone through periods like that have just deep, deep intense pain and the load that you carry on a daily basis. Yeah, I agree. It does something dramatic to change your perspective. Around not only priorities but also toleration is I mean sit. Different experience but much younger when I was in law school, my mom was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer and passed away 10 months later and similarly, like I suddenly lost school suddenly everything that was happening I took a back seat and life and my mom and this precious time we had a front seat and everything else were like off the radar. Not yet in and anything that it means like your, your bullshit meter gets turned on high. Right? And it’s like you just suddenly see all the stuff like, That doesn’t matter. That doesn’t matter. That doesn’t matter. That doesn’t matter. Like you know, in the end, like I just saw that stuff going on my business and going. This is ridiculous. This is a Mickey Mouse looking thing. We’ve just bolted all this crap together and oh my god, I, you know, we’re all just used to it. We all do. just you know, work around it. And we just saw. And I was like, Yeah, no, there’s got to be like, in 12 years, things have got to have changed. There’s got to be a better piece of software out there.

Heather Pearce Campbell 37:11
Isn’t it interesting? I mean, the thing that’s fascinating about this, and again, you know, the difficulty of these scenarios is that sometimes it takes something like that like deep, deep grief or something really hard in our life to get the focus and the clarity around. Oh, my gosh, like, I can’t believe I’ve been putting up with this for so long. You know, I think the thing is that when life’s going too long, and you’ve got ordinary days, and like, it’s so easy for that kind of thing to pile up and add on and become part of the picture. And it’s in these moments of extreme compression that we get to really feel into like, Oh my gosh, does this make sense anymore? And without that sometimes I don’t think we get there.

Laura Posey 37:58
I think you’re right. You know with the COVID stuff so I have a good friend who’s a very successful speaker does about 70 gigs a year very very strong mid to high six-figure earner like crushing it but 70 gigs a year and she takes a month off so she does 70 gigs in 11 months So talk about travel right like go go go go go go go and she’s got private coaching clients and and and right and doesn’t need the money her husband just retired sold his practice their salt but when COVID hit and everything stop all of her business either got canceled or when virtual. So she wanted to zero real fast. And now that in so she started like okay, let me do the virtual thing and she set up her office and all kinds of stuff and, and we were talking the other day and she said, I said, so, you know, are you getting back on the road anytime soon? And she’s like, No, I’m not because I don’t want to. She said I didn’t realize what I was doing to myself and how stressed I was, and how chaotic My life was. And, you know, I told myself that it was like, oh, I’m going to go do this event and my husband’s going to come with me and we’re going to play golf for a couple of days. And she’s like, it sucked and I didn’t realize it. And she said, I’m cutting things way down even when things open back up. I’m cutting Wade back on good at virtual now I’m going to be selling virtual say screw this.

Heather Pearce Campbell 39:47
Yeah, no, I think that experience so I’m part of a mass another mastermind and we’re probably six months in, and it was designed to be about a six-month mastermind. It there was a time Gentlemen on there a week or two ago and the same thing and this discussion around COVID and how things are looking right now. He said, I’m getting the time with my children and my wife and like that, I never thought I could give to myself. Like he’s like, I don’t know why I thought that I couldn’t take that time. And like, literally not until I’m forced to take it, do I realize what I’ve been missing and how significantly life needs to change moving forward so that this is the norm and what was happening is no longer the norm. I think there’s probably a lot of people who are feeling bad right now in the midst of this.

Laura Posey 40:39
Yeah, I and I think it’s hard in the absence of some sort of pinch, right? Whether it’s an external thing or something internal where you just hit the wall and go, I can’t anymore, right, or you get sick, right? Because you’ve just been pedaling too hard and I think until it gets to that point, it is really hard sometimes to make those big sweeping changes. It’s one of the things that when folks are starting to feel a little antsy or a little overwhelmed and we start talking to them, they end up hiring us to help with their plan. Because they go You know what, I don’t want to get to that point. I don’t want to get to the half to I’m already feeling edgy. Can we do it now? And so we can get that clarity by asking really good questions. And you know, just having that outside person looking at stuff going well, why are you doing that? Why are you doing that? Why are you doing that? You know, I, it’s funny because you know, I do all these things for my clients. I have to have people do it for me, I have mastermind members, I like your blog and other mastermind and they look at my stuff and go oh, that’s really stupid. Or they’ll look at it and say that not in alignment with what you said you wanted to do. Why? Why are you thinking about that?

Heather Pearce Campbell 42:06
No. And I think that point alone of having an especially if it’s skilled, let’s be honest, it should be skilled outside perspective, right? Yes, there are lots of outside perspectives that we shouldn’t be taking in our business and some people do like I fight that problem being an attorney, you know, I fight that issue of somebody going well, my Uncle Bob, who also practices law in this area or you know, so and so’s a friend said do this. So let’s be clear, having outside perspective, that skilled outside perspective on that issue, but there’s nothing better I mean, I, this point that you make about you need it as well, I think it’s so important for all of us at any level of business to remember like, that is the pathway forward for going from here to there because we don’t come equipped with all the knowledge we don’t come equipped with all the insights like we have to follow the lead of people who have been on that path and are on that path a bit ahead of us right or are working with people a bit ahead of us so that we know what comes next. And even myself, I’ve been working on a marketing plan went through a course with a friend who teaches it. And he gave me an hour of his time and we did that yesterday and the same thing this feedback of like, Well, why are you focusing on that you need to be doing this right and having it be one of the things on my list but not realizing like, Oh, this should be the priority. This really should be what I’m focusing on like, even the gift of that one hour I came away being like, Oh my gosh, I had it so wrong.

Laura Posey 43:37
Yeah, well, we’re too close to our own stuff. We’re emotionally attached to every decision we’ve ever made. Right? And so we tend to make bad decisions. We start to pile up bad decision after bad decision, and we just can’t see it clearly. Right. We simply are I mean, as human beings, we can’t be objective About our own stuff. It’s, uh, you know, I asked my friends to come over, I said, Look, you guys gotta tell me. Like, if you walk into my house and it stinks, you need to say something. Because I walk in my house every day and it smells like my house. I mean, you know, unless it’s a new bed smell, right? Like, oh, garbage needs to go out. I don’t, I’m never going to notice it. So my closest friends when they walk in, they go. Yeah, right. Right. But it’s the same way with our business. We live in it every day. We cannot be objective about it. We’ve got to have somebody come in and sniff around in it and go, yeah, that’s thanks.

Heather Pearce Campbell 44:42
I’m sorry. That’s just such a good visual metaphor for this. It’s absolutely true. And I’m laughing because I know this. I know the feeling of it. Especially oh my gosh, my story of like, going through seven pregnancies to get my two children but the smell analogy Gotta be though when you’re pregnant. Oh my gosh, my smelling ability goes through the roof. And I already have a very strong sense of smell. But oh my gosh, something stinks. Right? And if you are disconnected from that, you know, who knows if you’ve got garbage sitting around in business if you can’t smell it.

Laura Posey 45:16
Yeah, yeah. And in your meetings, you just can’t. It’s because it’s yours. Right? Like, I mean, we all know you walk into somebody’s house and you’re like, it’s every house has a smell like you ever walked into somebody’s house who’s like, Oh, my God smells like grandma’s house in here.

Heather Pearce Campbell 45:32
For me. That’s actually a really fun smell. But there’s a very distinct smell. Absolutely.

Laura Posey 45:38
Yeah. I don’t know what it is. It’s just grandma’s house. Right? I couldn’t define it. church basement, elementary school. Every elementary school on the planet smells the same.

Heather Pearce Campbell 45:49
It’s a true mix of glue mix of markers mix of kids.

Laura Posey 45:53
Yeah. Yeah, it’s a bit then whole like there. It smells different than high school. Right, like it’s just through when you’re in it every day you don’t notice it. Like you, you know, you ask an elementary school teacher, how was the school smell like? No, no. Like it doesn’t happen. Right? Yeah, it doesn’t have a smell to them.

Heather Pearce Campbell 46:15
Yep, it’s true. No, it’s really true. So, a couple of things as we wrap up. First, I want to I want you to talk to us about how people work with you, what are the ways that you provide support to your clients?

Laura Posey 46:29
So, john, I’m just getting ready. I’m just writing down I’m going to write a blog post about the smell of your business.

Heather Pearce Campbell 46:38
You should. And then I want to link to it so that I can put it in my show notes.

Laura Posey 46:44
So we work with people in three different ways. So we have an online course do it yourself, just go through the lessons. That one’s kind of unique in that it only takes about three hours. It’s not what Have these like giant ad hour, I’m going to overwhelm you with a Ph.D. in planning because you don’t need that. You need to get a freakin plan done. So takes about three hours. We have a done with you version that we only launch in December of each year. And we bring folks together in small groups. And that’s actually a year-long program where we do four weeks of planning together. So we’ll get on and like, okay, here’s where you’re going to do, I’ll teach you what to do. And then you do it while we’re on the call. And then we come back and we talk about what you did, and we answer questions. And then after that, we spent a whole year with those clients, making sure that they’re implementing their plan. So we meet every single week, and we focus on implementation. We’ve got the whole structure around that. And then for my clients that have a that are larger, they typically have more complex businesses, meaning they’ve got more people. Usually, they have a leadership team. One and a half, you know, three or four people working on this, or more I did 17 one time that almost killed me. We did it one day for a $40 billion company. And because that he said, Look, we need to do this today. I need all my senior leadership. And I need three slides for the North American sales kickoff tomorrow morning. Okay, well, we’ll do it. I don’t know-how was a big check. You say yes. And you’re figuring out why I’m so but anyway, for clients that have a leadership team, I work with them while one whether that’s sometimes that’s virtual and sometimes that I go to them and you know, if they’ve got a whole bunch of people, and yeah, one of them, you should go to

Heather Pearce Campbell 48:50
Now, who knows what that’s gonna look like here in the next little while? Yeah. Well, and I also know you have got a gift. I’m going to put that link in the show notes for folks so that they can grab that as well tell us a little bit about your daily success checklist.

Laura Posey 49:07
Yep. So the only success checklist is mine. This is today’s This is a drone dog food sort of place. And so the daily success checklist really takes all that. So the one-page plan is big, you know, is the overview stuff. And so the daily success checklist has three columns. The first column is your success habits, what are the things that you have to do every day to be successful and healthy as a human being? Right? So it might be meditating or journaling or exercising? What are those success habits that you want to get done and make sure that you check those off, right, like practicing Spanish and practicing the Fiddler on my success habits as well as journaling and exercising? And then the center column is what do I need to do today to be successful? What are the three things I have to get done? Before I’m allowed to leave, and then what’s all the other little piddly stuff that has to happen? So, you know, the big move it forwards stuff. And then the last column is a reflection. It’s looking back at the day and saying, you know, what was the best part of my day? What did I learn? Is there anything I do differently tomorrow? What am I proud of today? And then a place to for some gratitude, right? What am I grateful for today. And so we have folks use that checklist. And so when you’re done with your, your middle column, you immediately go to the reflection column. And when you’re done with that you’re out, close the laptop, turn off the lights. You are done being a business owner for the day, and you just get to go back to being a full hundred percent parent or spouse or volunteer or protest or whatever. I

Heather Pearce Campbell 50:58
Love that. I mean, there’s a couple of things I And I love that concept of being able to have a container around your day and what that looks like because I think I mean I can speak personally for me that’s really challenging as a mom, you know, splitting direction getting interrupted, having my day, generally not go the way that I had planned. You know, it never feels like you get to turn off. And like the last couple of weeks just to catch up on work. I’ve been up to like 123 in the morning just trying to do the work. Yeah, so that that feels really good. I love that about your system, having the container, and then what I also love is this idea of identifying your and calling them success habits that are in the like more of the personal side of the equation, because I think it’s so easy to have. Here are the things that I should do for work. Here are the things that I’d like to do for my personal self, but not necessarily have those exist in the same place or see how your personal things over here translate into success. In other words,

Laura Posey 52:00
Yeah, I mean, here, it’s what makes you successful as a being. And you know, so maybe it’s eating certain foods or taking your vitamins or going for a walk and getting fresh air or getting your hands in the dirt. Or maybe it’s doing your plan. Like I tell people when you’re first using your daily success checklist put on there is one of your success habits, doing your checklist, right, and you could check it off every day, right? So yeah, we put that together in a kit. So there’s a printable version. There’s a fillable version, so you can use it online if you are on your computer if you want. There’s a tutorial video, and there’s a sample in there so that you can see like here’s what it looks like when it’s all filled out.

Heather Pearce Campbell 52:49
That’s amazing. Well, for anybody listening, I want to make sure that you go grab that gift. I mean that to me sounds like a million-dollar gift for a lot of people. It really changes the way that they do things. I’m going to go get it but people should go to the legal website warrior forward slash podcast for the show notes to grab that. Laura any final thoughts on anything that you want to leave our listeners with before we sign off?

Laura Posey 53:18
I’m just like if you want to just talk about like you know how do you work on your business and getting your head clear? reach out to me right just shoot me an email we’ll schedule a time to talk because honestly I, we were talking about this earlier I have so much free time. Bizarre likes so much. So it’s weird so much of my business is automated and or outsourced and, and so normally my time is spent I do I travel a lot. And I’ve got clients that I go see and I’ve got groups that I manage it live and in-person in all of it is gone virtual every event I’ve had has been putting To virtual for the entire year. So I’m like, I’m not traveling I have all this time. So if somebody wants to just you know, talk about your business and see what’s going on.

Heather Pearce Campbell 54:10
I’m kidding. That’s such a generous gift. If you’re listening I highly recommend you take Laura up on that. I mean, Laura even this chat has been just you know, a lot of value for me personally, and I love knowing more about what you’re up to and hearing about your journey to get there because it confirms really a lot about, like, the importance of this conversation and why. You know, first of all, I want people to feel okay about being in a hard place, but know that m of the very best things can come from reaching that spot.

Laura Posey 54:44
Absolutely. All the best things in my life have come from places that were really that before felt really awful and dark and hard.

Heather Pearce Campbell 54:55
Thank you for that. Well, thank you so much for being here, Laura. I look forward to connecting with you again soon.

Laura Posey 55:00
Thanks for having me Heather.

GGGB Intro 55:05
Thank you for joining us today on the Guts Grit and Great Business podcast. We hope that we’ve added a little fuel to your tank, some coffee to your cup, and pep in your step to keep you moving forward in your own great adventures. For key takeaways links to any resources mentioned in today’s show and more, visit the shownotes at www.legalwebsitewarrior.com/podcast. Be sure to subscribe to the podcast and if you enjoyed today’s conversation, please give us some stars and a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast so others will find us to keep up the great work you are doing in the world and we’ll see you next week.