Laura Gassner Otting
Live Limitlessly
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Fee Range: Contact Speaker Exchange Agency
- Author of Limitless & Wonderhell
- Catalyst
- Executive Coach
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Author, Catalyst, and Executive Coach Laura Gassner Otting inspires people to push past the doubt and indecision that keep great ideas in limbo by helping audiences think bigger and accept greater challenges that reach beyond their current, limited scope of belief.
She delivers strategic thinking, well-honed wisdom, and perspective generated by decades of navigating change across the start-up, corporate, nonprofit, political, as well as philanthropic landscapes. Laura dares audiences to find their voice, and generate the confidence needed to tackle larger-than-life challenges by helping them to seek new ways of leading, managing, and mentoring others.
Laura’s rebellious and entrepreneurial edge has been well-honed over a 25-year career that started when she dropped out of law school to join an unknown southern governor’s presidential campaign, and ended up as a Presidential Appointee in Bill Clinton’s White House, where she helped shape AmeriCorps.
She left a leadership role as the youngest Vice President at a nationally respected search firm when she realized that her boss’s definition of success didn’t align with hers and, instead, founded and ran one of the fastest growing search firms in the country, partnering with the full gamut of mission-driven executives, from start-up dreamers to scaling social entrepreneurs to global philanthropists. In 2015, Laura sold that firm to the team who helped her build it, both because she was hungry for the next chapter and because she held an audacious dream of electing our nation’s first female president. (Whomp whomp.)
Since that time, Laura has appeared regularly on Good Morning America and the TODAY Show, and her writing has been seen in Harvard Business Review, Forbes, HR Magazine. Laura is the author of Limitless: How to Ignore Everybody, Carve Your Own Path, and Live Your Best Life (2019), which debuted at #2 on the Washington Post bestseller list (right behind Michelle Obama), has been translated into Arabic, Korean, Turkish, Portuguese, and German, and which Good Morning America’s Robin Roberts chose as one of her Favorite Books of 2019, as well as Mission-Driven: Moving from Profit to Purpose (2015). Her forthcoming book, Wonderhell, is expected in April 2023.
Through her own commitment to give back, Laura has helped build a local Montessori school, co-founded a women’s philanthropic initiative, advised a start-up national women’s PAC, grew a citizen-leadership development program, and completed five charity-inspired marathons, projects emblematic of her passions and values. She’s turned on by the audacity of The Big Idea and that larger-than-life goal you just can’t seem to shake. She’s an instigator, a motivator, and a provocateur, and she’s never met a revolution she didn’t like, just ask her enduringly patient husband, two almost-grown sons, and troublesome puppy with whom she lives outside of Boston, MA.
Many of us spend our lives pursuing a singular idea of success, one that was created for us by someone else. We give votes to those who shouldn’t even have voices and strive to go faster and faster even as we find ourselves falling further and further behind. We chase gold stars, we check all the boxes, we Lean In – and we still feel incomplete.
In this keynote, Laura teaches you how to ignore the rules that created your limits, align your energies and your actions, and do work that really matters so that you can live your best life. Aimed at entrepreneurs and misfits, idealists and dreamers, as well as anyone seeking to align who they are with what they do, this talk lights a fire within that catalyzes energy and excitement towards becoming the change agent needed to maximize impact.
How does this talk change audiences?
We are all held back by everyone else’s idea of what we can be and who we can be and — gasp! — what we shouldn’t be. But, what if we cast aside those ideas and figured out what mattered to us? When your audience learns to do this, they will:
- understand what truly excites them about the work they do and become more engaged, more passionate, and more productive
- learn how to find what makes them special, and bring the fullest versions of themselves to the work they do every day
- connect to what they really love about what they do, and have the type of contagious confidence that excites your customers to buy
- create a support system of like-minded achievers and accountability partners who never let them settle for mediocrity
How does this talk benefit organizations?
Engaged workers are 22% more productive in their organizations. With 20 years of experience recruiting the most successful people in the world, Laura truly understands what inspires people to bring their best and most productive selves to work. As a result of this talk, your organization will see:
- more effective recruiting and retention, with higher engagement levels, less turnover, and a more cohesive culture all pointed in the same direction
- a more robust bottom line, with deeper and more expansive customer interaction built not on transactions but deeply rooted relationships
- a re-energized workforce that shares a common language and framework with empowers everyone to bring their best selves every day
Demographic shifts in the workforce have led to conversations about purpose and meaning that have heretofore never been had. Millennials, GenXers, and Boomers alike are all demanding that their work matter more. And, yet, only one-third of the US workforce reports that they are actively engaged in their work.
We are using an outdated scorecard which measures the value of a job – title, money, prestige, among others – without adding in the most important part of the equation: the employee. We know that engaged workers are 22% more productive and profitable for their employers, but what recruits the employee doesn’t retain them.
Backed up by a 20-year career in executive search and a three-year research project, comprising nearly 6000 responses from 74 different countries from before, during, as now as we come out of the pandemic, Laura Gassner Otting teaches leaders how to unlock their employees’ engagement to not only make them limitless, but make their companies and their profits limitless too.
How does this talk change audiences?
Workers are dissatisfied, but they can’t quite put their fingers on why. Rather than figuring it out, they take one of two paths: disengagement (quiet quitting) or resignation (old fashioned loud quitting).
Your audience of leaders will learn:
- what is driving employee dissatisfaction, disengagement, and disillusionment… and what they need to do about it right now
- why being a “good leader” isn’t good enough, and how to create the kinds of relationships with their team to become better managers and leaders
- more confidence in how to use so-called “soft skills” to lead with inspiration and motivation
- a common language and framework for talking to team members and reignite their passion for the work
How does this talk benefit organizations?
Turnover is expensive. Quiet quitting is even worse. Organizations with Limitless Leaders will benefit from having:
- more effective recruiting and retention, with higher engagement levels, less turnover, and a more cohesive culture all pointed in the same direction
- a more robust bottom line, with deeper and more expansive customer interaction built not on transactions but deeply rooted relationships
- a more joy about common goals with less friction about difficult decisions and strategic investments
- self-aware and growth-oriented middle and senior management
- a re-energized workforce that shares a common language and framework with empowers everyone to bring their best selves every day
A smash hit with empowerment audiences, Limitless: How to Ignore Everybody, Carve Your Own Path, and Live Your Best Life has helped readers find the courage to finally live the life they’ve always wanted. Through this interactive experience, Laura motivates audience members to channel their confidence and fully embody that aspirational state of leadership.
Your clients don’t buy your products. They don’t buy your services. They don’t buy your brand.
They buy the solution that you provide to the problem that they have.
In order to win at the sales game, your audience must connect to why this product, this service, this brand actually matters to them, and be able to communicate that meaning as they build mutually beneficial relationships with your clients.
In this talk, based on decades of experience as an entrepreneur and chief rainmaker, Laura breaks down the process of connection… to self, to product, and to sale.
How does this talk change audiences?
Your sales team will be more effective if they tap into what connects them to the products and services they sell. In this straight-talking keynote, Laura teaches them:
- why their current approach isn’t working, and a quick mental shift that will change everything
- how meaning matters to them and to their customers, and how to connect to and communicate the meaning behind what they do (and why they do it)
- why failure isn’t finale, but the place where we grow and iterate and change, and where to find the type of contagious confidence so that your customers can’t say anything but yes!
How does this talk benefit organizations?
Why wouldn’t you want a sales team brimming with excitement and enthusiasm about the products and services that you provide? Laura will help them get there so that:
- your sales team is more successful and fulfilled in their work, and not just because they are making more money
- turnover is reduced, customer relationships are deepened, and loyalty grows
- higher sales numbers feel not just attainable, but exciting, which leads to a better bottom line for all
“How Can I Help?” is a well-intended question that typically creates actions resulting in martyrdom, burnout, and malaise that prevents real innovative thinking and creative solutions.
What is the cost of success, or seeing your possibility, of revealing your bigger potential? The Burden of Potential attaches a weight as large as your ego to your shoulders and demands that you carry it at all times. It starts the moment you realize that you have an idea that has promise, and that could have greatness if you leaned into it as it demands. It’s wonderful, and it’s hell. It’s wonderhell.
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