Wonderhell: Navigating Success, Doubt, and Breakthrough

Laura Gassner Otting: What would you knew if you knew for sure you would fail and yet you'd be willing to do it over and over and over until you got it right? That's your passion, right? So your values lie in the things that you're willing to fail at, the things that you're willing to suck at, the things where you're willing to sit in the discomfort, because that's the only path to growth. And so every time we achieve something, it's incredible. It's amazing. It's, it's, it's, it's humbling, it's wonderful. And the success that you've had shows you a potential you never even knew you had.

Welcome to the ReLaunch podcast, and today I have somebody that I have admired. I have been watching her throughout at least the last five years, kind of like, just take the world on, like, this incredible Quantum Leap going over things. And I wanted to bring her on, because she has accomplished so many different areas of her life, leading to where she is now, so many different relaunches we're going to go through, you know, a few of those. But Her name is Laura Gassner Otting, and she is a powerhouse of bold leadership and transformations, from impactful roles in the White House to founding a top executive search firm and becoming a best selling author with wonder how Laura knows how to turn big ideas into extraordinary achievements. She's been featured on Good Morning America, the Today Show Harvard Business Review, and she's here to challenge you to think bigger, lead fearlessly and chase not just small goals, but audacious goals. In today's episode, we are going to dive into the roller coasters of success. Why it excites us, frustrates us, and we're going to hear her top tips for building the career that all you've always wanted. This conversation will light a fire under you and leave you ready to take your next big leap. All right, Laura, good to have you, and super excited.

Laura Gassner Otting: Well, that was quite a build up. So you know, I gotta, I gotta really bring it.

I gotta tell you, you should have seen what they originally had. It would have been, I would have been here for 15 minutes. I'm like, okay, great, I get that. Well, I always like to start with, what is the most significant relaunch that really shaped who you are today? That really changed course, sure you

Laura Gassner Otting: that's easy. I dropped out of law school because I heard this unknown presidential hopeful talking about this idea of community service in exchange for college tuition, and I thought that needs to happen at the time I was a I was in the beginning of my first year of law school. I didn't really want to be in law school. But I had been told by everybody I knew growing up, from teachers to family to, you know, celebrities, right? Like being a lawyer is great. You should be a lawyer. I had a fourth grade teacher who said, you're pretty argumentative. You should be a lawyer. And of course, I told her she was wrong, because I'm argumentative. But everything I saw around me was like, this is a great path. And so I got to law school, and I looked around and I was like, I don't want to done this is not interesting to me. And I did what a lot of us women do when we find ourselves in miserable situations. I dated the world's worst boyfriend, and I joke around. I in my keynotes, I tell the story on stage, and I say the world's worst boyfriend had exquisite taste in precisely two things, the first obviously being girlfriends, and the second being presidential candidates. And he gave me a ride home from school one day, we stopped at this guy's campaign office, and I picked up some paperwork, and there was a little video of then Governor Bill Clinton talking about the idea that would become the signature promise of his campaign, which would become AmeriCorps when he was in office. So I saw that it made so much sense to me. I was, if I'm being honest, kind of running away from where I was and sort of running towards something, but mostly away. But I ended up, he ended up in the White House. I ended up in the White House, and my entire life changed because of it.

And how long did you do that? How long were you part of that world, because then things changed yet again.

Laura Gassner Otting: Yeah, so I spent the better half of that year on the campaign trail, and then I ended up in the transition office, and then in the White House. I spent four years in the White House, and at that point I, you know, I was 25 almost 26 years old, and I wanted to get back on the campaign trail. And my then boss said, in the way, that only, like a father figure, mentor type, could say, you know, Laura, you're too young or you're he said you're too old to get back on a campaign bus and eat cold pizza and sleep on high school gymnasium floors, and you're kind of too young to be the domestic policy advisor. So there's not really, like, you know, being 26 on a presidential campaign is like. Years, you know, you're like, 107 and so he said you should talk to

my friend Miller. That's because nobody really wants to be in the bus eating cold pizza. Yeah,

Laura Gassner Otting: no, it's terrible. But also, but also, like, but also it's exciting, and you're filled with idealism. And it's, you know? And this was, again, this was 1996 so this is right after Newt Gingrich, but like, long before the vitriol of the current day, so it was still filled with like, hope and joy. I still believe in a place called Hope, right? Like it was just, it was just a different time and but he said you should go talk to my friend Arnie Miller. He runs Isaacson Miller, which is the biggest search firm in the country that does specifically nonprofit work. You'll go talk to him. He'll find you a job in the nonprofit sector, and then you'll come back in four years and do something on the big on the Gore campaign. And I was like, that's great. Sounds terrific. I went to talk to Arnie, and within five minutes of sitting down with Arnie, I realized that his office was in Boston, and at the time, I was dating the world's best boyfriend, and I was like, I think he's the one. He's about to move to Boston for a job. I should move to Boston. So I was like, what if I came to work for you? And Arnie said, Yeah, you should come work for me. That'd be great. And I was like, terrific. What do you do? And that's how I became a head hunter. I mean, that's it. And then I worked for Arnie for four years, and I really learned from the best and the brightest about how to do this work at the highest levels, like how to be just absolutely impeccable recruiting the senior talent organizations that we have our civic infrastructure. But then I had a moment of rage Hillary. And the moment of Rage was, I think I can do this better and smarter and faster and with more authenticity and more integrity and less cost to my my clients, and more profit for my people if we did it a different way. And I marched into Arnie's office, like, you know, Jerry Maguire, and I was like, there is a better way. And he was like, there is the door, you know, like, you could stay and do things our way. We love you. You're great. Or if you really want to do things your way, then you got to leave. And, you know, there's that moment when you realize you're actually not part of your client's solutions, that it makes you realize that you're part of their problems. And that's the moment, I think, where relaunch has to happen, because that moment where I realized that the way that the search firm was organized, it was profits first, Mission second. And I was like, mission, first, profits will come. I couldn't stay. It was an untenable place to stay because I wasn't part of their solution. It left me in only one place, which said I was part of their problem, and I couldn't keep coming into work.

What's interesting about that is, I call it three HQ alignment, where you've got your headquarters within you, you got your head, your heart, your highest self, desperate video, and when you're out of alignment, you can't you can't force it. It's just not in you, and so you're out of integrity. And so that's what happened to you. So what happened then?

Laura Gassner Otting: So I left and I launched my own search firm, and by the way, I did it right when I was about 11 months pregnant with my first child. So no to all the listeners. Maybe that's a talk. Maybe that's not an easy time to relaunch. But I

this would, this would have been your first one.

Laura Gassner Otting: Yes, yes. So lots. I'm sure that you speak to a lot of entrepreneurs. I'm sure that your listeners listen to lots of podcasts of entrepreneurs, and they tell these stories about how, like, they had this bold vision, and they created the thing, and it grew, and it was great. Well, okay, here's what really happened. I started that company, and I ran it for 15 years, and we grew 100% year over year over year. How ever it also needs to be said that the reason I started that firm was because I knew I couldn't stay where I was, and so I left, I went and I had 24 hours of of labor in an unplanned C section, and six weeks later, I'm sitting on my kitchen table holding this person in my arms who's basically still a stranger to me, and my phone rings, and it's a friend of mine from my old White House days, and she goes, so ew. I heard you had a baby. Cool, I guess. But are you still doing search because our CEO just left, and we need to find a new one. And I was like, I looked at the baby, and I looked at the phone, I looked at my laptop sitting in front of me, and I was like, Yes, I am. And she's like, great. What are you going to charge me? And I was like, $100 an hour. And she was like, great. Send me a contract. Baby in hand, one hand, and I'm like pecking at the keyboard How to Write a professional services contract, and then I press send, and that's how my business was really born. But I also knew that I knew the values that I wanted to uphold, and the route through all uncertainty is is anchored in the values that we hold dear. And so as long as I was clear on the values that made it very easy for me to understand what work I wanted to take and what work I didn't want to take, and the work that I wanted to take was work that I was going to excel at. And good work begets more good work. And the better we did, the more our reputation grew, and the more. We grew and again, 100% year over year, until we had, you know, a global search firm. But I just, I just wanted to make sure that this relaunch isn't always like and everything's great because it's not, and it starts off messy and sloppy and ugly and hard, and you just have to keep showing up.

So let me ask you, a lot of people try to figure out that whole core values, what is it? And as you said, you know when it when it matches, it's amazing. And you know when I really nailed what my core values were, and then I realized that growth and connection and the joy of like just joy of life, when I put those together in the business, that's when everything took off. But how did you nail down your core? Because right now you got a baby in your hand. You're trying to do this. You're trying to figure out, how do I even run this? How did you put those core, those core values, together?

Laura Gassner Otting: Well, you know, listen, everybody always says, Follow your passion and I always think, I think that that's the spoken word, illegitimate career advice, sister of the live, laugh, love, tattoo. It's just awful. Like, it's just, it's not useful. It's like an Instagram meme. It's terrible. And they're like, What would you do if you knew you couldn't fail? That's your passion. And I'm like, no, what would you do if you knew for sure you would fail, and yet you'd be willing to do it over and over and over until you got it right. Great way to reframe that. That's your passion, right? So your values lie in the things that you're willing to fail at, the things that you're willing to suck at, the things where you're willing to sit in the discomfort, because that's the only path to growth. And so every time we achieve something, and this is what I talk about in wonder health. It's incredible. It's amazing. It's it's, it's, it's humbling, it's wonderful. And the success that you've had shows you a potential you never even knew you had. And inside of that potential is an increased pace of a bigger hunger, right? These larger goals. And in that increased hunger and the faster pace and the larger goals is also doubt and uncertainty and anxiety and stress. So it's wonderful to achieve something and see this new potential, but it's also kind of hell. So it's wonder hell. And wonder hell is the space where the burden of your potential comes in and looks at you and unpacks its backpack and is like, hey, Hillary, what you got for me? Huh? Like, what are you going to do with this newfound potential? And in that moment in my boss's office, I knew that there was another way, and I wanted to figure it out in that moment when my old White House friend called me up, I was like, Oh, maybe I could just do this by myself. Like, that'd be kind of cool and and I didn't know how I was going to do it, but I saw that new version of me. I could be the person who actually does this on my own, my way. And so when you see that vision of yourself and who you can become and who you can embody, if you're willing to hear that voice inside your head, not as a limitation, but as an invitation to all that you can become what you care about, becomes pretty clear. Your values become pretty clear. I knew that I could become the person who created my own firm, who did the work differently. If I put my clients first right, like that was a core value.

You ended up saying, wonder hell is not a breakdown, but a break through. Yes, and you know, you say that you put your clients first because you kept that was the most important thing when you're talking about wonder health, that's something that we go through a lot, just like relaunches, right? I mean it you keep pushing. Tell us more about this concept and why you wrote that book. Yeah.

Laura Gassner Otting: So I wrote that book because my last book came out limitless. I had, I had launched that book with absolutely no platform. So okay, so just to back up a stitch, I ran that search firm for 15 years, and I sold it to women who helped me build it. Why? Because I was at that point where I kind of like solved the problems. I'd done the things and I wanted to do something else, but I know I did what I wanted to do. I just knew I didn't want to do that anymore. So I sold the company to them, and I was thinking about what was going to come next. And while during that summer of figuring it out, I had this moment where I got lady who lunched, is the way that I like to call it, I was I didn't have anything else going on, so I got volun told to run an art auction for a local nonprofit, and I didn't want to get on stage and speak, because that's terrifying, right? And so right before they start the auction, of friend of mine gets on stage. She's a she's a local newscaster, she's like, I'd like to thank my dear friend, Laura gasner rodding, who dedicates her life to philanthropy. And I was like, What do? What now? Who? Like, there's nothing wrong with that. And I've spent a lot of my life dedicated to philanthropy. But in that moment, I was wearing, like, a couture gown that was donated by one of the fashion sponsors, and I was wearing these diamonds that were donated by one of the jewelry sponsors. And I'm standing next to my husband, who's works in the finance section sector, and I'm like, oh my god, I'm a lady who lunches, like, what's going on? So I went home that night lunches. I went and there's nothing wrong with being lady who lunches, but it was just it was one dimension of and all of a sudden it was the whole of myself. Health and and I did not like that very much, because I had this crisis of identity. So I went home that night, because I'm super clever.

I wanted this a crisis of identity, because you had left your former you sold it.

Laura Gassner Otting: I was LG, oh, CEO. Who am I when I'm no longer I'd sold the company, and I was literally unemployed, and I didn't know who I was. And so I went home that night, because I'm super clever. I bought Laura gasnerotting.com and I started blogging about things that were bothering me in the world. And the executive producer of TEDx Cambridge saw one of my blog posts and said, You should give a TEDx talk about that. And I went, No way, that's terrifying. Again. I don't want to speak in public. And my kids kind of bullied me into it. And so I went and I spoke, and then I got an offer to go speak somewhere for money. And I was like, wait a minute, that's a job. Like, tell me more about this job. And so I started going to places to speak, and I started noticing that the people who were getting paid quote, unquote real money all had books. So I was like, I gotta get me one of them. Okay, so that brings us up. So to her,

I gotta step back, because what was the first TEDx that you did?

Laura Gassner Otting: What was the first TEDx was called, stop asking, How can I help? And it was all based around this idea that, like, when there's a massive crisis somewhere in the world, we send teddy bears, and teddy bears don't do squat to actually help, because we send 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of teddy bears, and maybe six get into the hands of these children. Of these children, like these tiny rays of hope that they are meant to be. And there's something wrong with sending a teddy bear, but it doesn't actually stop the thing from happening again, right? Like sending teddy bears when there has been a tsunami does not make Mother Nature not send more tsunamis. What makes Mother Nature? What makes people survive when Mother Nature sends another one is actually sending money so that they can create early warning detection, right? They can. There's other things that they can do. So if we stop asking, How can I help? What we ask, what needs to happen for the people who are actually in crisis, we come up with different answers. We don't send teddy bears. Maybe we send money, we don't send we don't send winter coats to Haiti. Maybe we send blood, right? Like, what are the things that we actually need to be doing. And so that was the first talk, yeah,

and I you got in there, and you got a a speaking gig. You were like, wait a second,

Laura Gassner Otting: I got paid $1,500 in round two, tickets to Boise, Idaho, and I got a hat with the potato on it, which is very exciting. I still have it to this day. And then I was like, the people who are getting paid real money have books. I should get me one of them. And so I wrote limitless. I had zero platform, I had no newsletter. I barely had a website. I mean, it was like, it was like, Fisher Price, my first job, kind of, kind of thing going on. How long this was 2019 when limitless came out. So it was five years ago, and somehow that book ended up debuting at number two on the Washington Post bestseller list, right behind Michelle Obama, which sounds very impressive, except if you know, you know that just means I sold a lot of books in the greater Maryland, Virginia, DC area. But it sounds, because it's the Washington Post, like it's a big, major national paper, right? So here's a theme listeners. There's a little bit of Wizard of Oz that happens in the relaunch. So number two in the Washington Post, best sellers, right behind Michelle Obama, sounds way more impressive than I probably sold 300 books in the Greater Washington now. Michelle Obama sold like, 9 million, but still, like, that whole sentence is very impressive and makes me seem like a bigger deal. So that book comes out, and I am exhausted. I

did it so humble you are girl. Because,

Laura Gassner Otting: I mean, I just, I just want to be like, I like, I just feel like, there's a lot of people are like, yeah, and I dropped out of college and I, like, built Amazon in my garage. Yay, right. Like, there's so much more of the story,

there's a lot more. And, you know, you put it out there, like, Hey, this is the reality. That's what I really like about you. So you ended up having limitless, but then you went in and you decided, recently, I need another book.

Laura Gassner Otting: Yes, well, so what happened with limitless is, it is I worked so hard to get that book launched, and I was so exhausted when my in the moment in the middle of the Red Eye, when I get this text message from my publisher saying, your book just debuted. Number two, I was so tired. And I like, left my humility somewhere, like in the airport waiting lounge or the flight that I was on. I was like, number two. How do you get to be number one? And suddenly I was stuck in wonder. Hell. It was like, This is amazing. And also now I feel the burden of this potential that, like I could do more. So how do I do more? And then the pandemic happened. So I spent most of the pandemic just basically creating content for people who follow me on social media, and I interviewed 100 different glass ceiling shatters, Olympic medalists, startup unicorns, thought leaders, creatives, philanthropists, activists, everyday people like you and me about how they got out of this space of Wonder hell. And what I learned is that you don't get out of it. You don't survive it. You learn how to thrive in it. And so wonder hell is really all about the love. Lessons that I learned from all these people along the way, and so that I tested that, that idea on another TEDx stage. And I think that talk has almost 3 million views right now, which is kind of mind blowing.

It was fantastic. And yes, and for those that haven't seen it yet, and they should, you absolutely should go watch it. And again, it's called, Why doesn't success bring happiness? You talk about the what you've done to wonder how, but what was your main goal of delivering that one?

Laura Gassner Otting: My main goal was to figure out how I get myself out of Wonder health. That's really all it was. But I you know, there was no reason to write another book if I wasn't gonna, like, get another crown, you know, another jewel. So my I think there's a lot of ways to relaunch, and a lot of times when you relaunch, somebody says, Just do lots and lots and lots of volume. Just keep going. Keep going, keep going. And like, someone will notice you, and it'll be great. And I think that's horse hooey, right? I look at people who are doing public speaking, for example, and the way to make a lot of money public speaking is either you do a ton of volume and you speak and you speak and you speak and you speak, and then eventually somebody gives you, like, a little bit more money each time because you're so busy. Or you have huge IP that's like a New York Times number one best seller. You're under the oak tree with Oprah, and everybody wants you great. Or you have some sort of, like, celebrity shine, celebrity proximity. And I looked at those, and I was like, You know what, I'm 53 I'm not gonna, I don't want to do the volume. I don't want to live on an airplane and, like, travel around to, like, you know, Elks lodges and, like, speak to six veterans and, you know, 208, staff. Like, I'm not gonna, not gonna get there fast enough at 53 to do that. It's a real sort of lightning in a bottle to like, get picked by Oprah, right? Like, I don't know if I can do that, but what I can do is I can, like, pitch myself to media. I can say things not like, limitless was a best seller, but number two in the Washington Post, best seller, right behind Michelle Obama, which makes me seem shinier. And so my goal with wonder hell is I want to make the Wall Street Journal Best Seller list, because I know if I make the Wall Street Journal Best Seller list, boom. That's a bump up in my speaking fee. That makes me look shinier. It makes me look more de risked for the people who might want to put me on their stage, on their screen. And so my entire strategy for the sort of relaunching into the speaking world is to say who are the people who I want to be, my peers. What are the jewels and the crowns that they have on their heads, and how do I go get them? What is the fastest and most expedient and also most integrity filled way to go get there? Because I'm not saying I want to go do this big thing. I'm saying 40 years of experience that I can do this big thing with do we lose? So why not go try to do the big thing? Why should I wait in line with the people who have three years of experience when I have 30 there's a skill set you need to get on a stage, to get on a screen to do that. But you can't just have the skill set. You've also got to have the background. So in a relaunch, you think about like, what are the what are the transferable skills I have, right? I've presented in front of clients, maybe I could present in front of an audience. But also, what are the translatable skills I understand because I came out of politics, how to come up with an idea, how to be like, emotionally, resident, resonant, and then how to land the plane quickly with the sound bite. That's absolutely translatable to media, right? So like, what are your transferable skills, and what are your translatable skills? And through those and the burden of the potential that you feel, that's where your relaunch comes from.

Okay, so how are we doing against your goal?

Laura Gassner Otting: Well, wonder how debuted on the Wall Street Journal bestseller list, but also at number two,

I already knew that. I just wanted you to say it

Laura Gassner Otting: so it seems damn James clear. I don't know who on earth does not actually have a copy of his book yet, but that man still sells so many books every single week. So yes, number two, but I am, I should say, in the process of writing a book proposal for my next book, and my goal for that is New York Times. Why not?

You know what? Why? Nominates jewels? I love. Yes, exactly, more more jewels for the crown, which is a very good thing. But here's the thing I want to I want to just ask you, you are a regular correspondent for today's show for Good Morning America. What do you find is the thing that right now is resonating, given that you know your background, everything is resonating the most out there in our country. What do they want to hear from you? I

Laura Gassner Otting: think everybody's interested in reinvention. I think everybody right now is interested in, like a lot of people came out of the pandemic saying, when life gets back to normal, is the normal I'm going back to really the life I want. And I think most people said, not really, right? There's, I don't not think there are a lot of people that are like, Absolutely, 100% I want things exactly the way they were. I think we all learned a lot of lessons, some good, some bad, and we learned again about. What we really valued. And so people came out of the last few years feeling like they want to live. They want to be reinvented. There's a certain amount of time we have left on on this earth. What do we want to do with it? And so the the it's no surprise to me that your podcast on relaunching is so successful because people really do want to relaunch. They want to they want to do something new. I also happen to be Gen X, as I mentioned. I'm 53 I have two kids in college, and I'm at that sort of empty nester stage where it's like, okay, I I probably have 20 great years left. I likely have 10 good years after that, and then the years after 83 maybe they're good, maybe they're great, maybe they're terrible, maybe they don't exist. Who knows, right? So I'm like looking at the time, and I'm thinking, well, there's a lot of things I want to do in this life, and so what I'm finding is that every time I talk like people want people want insights, they want practical strategies, they want a motivation. But really it has to do a lot with like, how do I figure out what makes me special? What's my if factor, and how do I use that to reinvent myself? So

100% and I do have to ask you this midlife right, there seems to be now this women are wanting so desperately to be relevant at our age, and I'm Gen X too. We want that. But how do you at this point? And you said, there are more things that you want to do, there are more things that I want to do. I'm like, I see it as, Wow, it's go time. Like we gotta, we gotta do this now. No time to waste. So how are you looking at being kind of in the game as a mid lifer? You know, I

Laura Gassner Otting: take great liberation at the fact that as a midlife woman, we are basically invisible, which means we could spend a lot of time doing the work in the dark, messing up, learning, trying again, before anybody even notices that we're on the field. That's actually super liberating, if you think about it. It means we're not embarrassed. It means nobody's paying attention to us. We don't have to be self conscious, we don't have to feel like an imposter, because by the time people notice that we're there, it's because we are kicking so much ass that they can't ignore us. So I love me. I think that's pretty great.

I gotta tell you, in my book relaunch spark your heart to ignite your life, there is a whole section about be invisible, so you can be visible, like go for it, and then make that huge entrance onto whatever stage, whatever place you're trying to be, because, yeah, you've got to go internalize this. You've got to grow, you've got to learn. You've had so many opportunities. But listen,

Laura Gassner Otting: if there was ever an invisible midlife or ever a midlife woman who should have been much more visible than she was, it was Eleanor Roosevelt, right? Eleanor Roosevelt arguably ran our country for multiple years during World War Two, and yet she was a midlife woman, and nobody paid attention to her. And she said people would worry far less about what other people thought about them. They realized how seldomly they did like literally nobody is paying attention to you because they're so worried thinking about themselves in the same way that we're so worried thinking about ourselves, and we're not actually paying attention to any not actually paying attention to anybody else. So go out there and fail with abandon, because failure is a finale. It's fulcrum. It's the place where we learn and we grow and we iterate and we change, and by the time you're kicking ass, everybody's paying attention. Like, what an overnight success? No, you're not an overnight success. You've just been putting in the work in the dark when nobody was paying attention.

You know, I think I've interviewed like you have. I've gone back and I've interviewed a lot of impact millionaires. And how did they do it? Very much like, Think and Grow Rich. And it's interesting, this, this idea that people, you know, the unicorns, I mean, they're like, point 000, all the way off the Troy. There are so few of them. The rest of us have worked really hard to get to where we are. Well, I have to tell you, super excited to have you on the show. And you brought it delivered. You are a fascinating woman. You've got so much more life to live. Girl, I'm excited to read your next book, to hear your next TED talk, to do all of that. See you on the stages. One thing you did mention, I have to ask is, at the time you were like stages, ah, how did you become stage ready?

Laura Gassner Otting: Oh, well, it's really funny. I've actually been debating creating a mastermind about this in the new year, because I get asked this a lot. Um, I, I did some speaker training, and that speaker training involved some improv, and I don't like improv. I'm a little bit of a control freak. I did advance on that presidential campaign, like, where's the candidate going to stand? Where's the press line, where's the secret service line? Like, everything is controlled, and I was trained. But. Secret Service on how to do it. So improv was uncomfortable at best, and if you do enough improv and you and you realize that you can actually handle anything, if you sort of stand in your center of expertise, then you just go in knowing what you're talking about, rather than memorizing a script. I also think the other thing is, and these are super high level comments, but I think it's not really about getting comfortable speaking on stage as much as it's getting comfortable not speaking on stage. And what I mean by that is there are times when you're on stage where you actually just have to take a beat and be quiet and let the person on the other side think their thought, so that they can process what you just said. And it's not I need to slow down and speak like this. I can slow down and speak like this, and then I can go to the next thought, and I can give you space in between for you to have that reaction. And so just that understanding that it's a conversation helped a lot. Also.

Laura Gassner Otting, thank you so much for being here, everyone. If you have thought of something here where it sparked you that there was some insightful comments I know I wrote down, a whole lot of them, please let us know. Go on over. Listen in again, because the nuggets were so good. And come on over to on Instagram. Hillary DeCesare, DM us, put in the comments. What are you finding now? I mean, right now you're going into this next year, and this just gave you, like, it's never you never stop, like, really think about what you want, what you're trying to achieve. And as I always say, live now, love now, relaunch now into that next, next best version of yourself. And let's not get stuck in wonder. Wonder how let's like, move through it. And one of the things that we did, and it's like, it's not a final destination, it's more of a portal. Laura said in a quote once, and I have to say, I love that, because let's just really find our essence. Where are we going? What are we doing? And make sure you're surrounding yourself with amazing people, because that's what lights up the waves. All right, everyone, take care, and we'll see you again next week.