Leadership, Presence, and Getting Out in the Woods: Interview with Laura Calandrella
May 19, 2021
By Matt Miner, MBA, CFP®
Laura Calandrella’s vision for leadership is sustainable, humane, and effective. Laura’s new book, Our Next Evolution sets out a people-first model for business, non-profits, and the public sector to work together on personal, organizational, and environmental issues.
Key-Takeways from the Laura Calandrella Interview
First, if you’ve got a mammoth project – like writing a book, or making a financial plan, get help and follow a process. Brannan Sirratt is Laura’s writing coach.
Second, to make gains in your health and money, get outside and move! It’s cheap and delightful (WSJ paywall alert).
Third, watch the Tiffany Shlain video on daydreaming. Then, turn off your screens and let your mind wander. If dreaming was important to Thomas Edison and Salvador Dali, it won’t hurt you and me, either.
Click here to order Our Next Evolution.
Click here to learn more about Laura at LauraCalandrella.com.
TRANSCRIPT
[music]
[00:00:02] Matt Miner: It's a fact: when a friend who explained about high school dances, introduced me to my ninth-grade girlfriend, and with whom I used to swap mixtapes publishes a book about leadership, she's invited on my show. I'm so glad she said, yes.
Hey and welcome to the Work Pants Finance Podcast. I'm Matt Miner, your money guide and Work Pants Finance is the show for MBAs, entrepreneurs and other professionals who want their financial plan to work as hard as they do.
My guest is Laura Calandrella. Laura is a leadership coach, facilitator, sustainability strategist, and author of Our Next Evolution, a book with a people-first model for leaders in business, nonprofit, and the public sector to work on environmental issues. I met Laura when my family moved from Seattle to Tucson. I was 15 years old, an awkward time for anything and especially for getting started in a very new place.
Laura then 14 did something few teenagers do. She introduced me to her many friends, shared tips for navigating the culture of my new school, and was interested and kind at a challenging time for me. Laura and I don't share all the same presuppositions about the world, but we're both focused on people and relationships in our work. We both believe there are processes to follow that make things better.
I love Laura's discussion of how she went about writing a book, her use of story, her daily habits, and the importance of presence, a practice that has required special effort over the last 14 months.
Now, here's your money guide Quick tip. Being healthy to the extent you can influence your health is one of the best financial returns anywhere. Exercise is part of that. Research continues to mount that supports the notion that getting exercise outside may be in the woods is super beneficial.
This February, Betsy Morris published an article in The Wall Street Journal called For Better Health During the Pandemic, Is Two Hours Outdoors the New 10,000 Steps? The physical and mental damage inflicted by COVID has doctors, researchers and others racing to tap into nature's therapeutic effects.
Here are a couple of quotes from that article. Morris writes, "Will two hours in the park become the next 10,000 steps? As people spend more time indoors, a mountain of scientific research says spending time in nature is critical to health and increases longevity. That means being in fresh air, under trees, and away from cars and concrete on a regular basis, and no Peloton doesn't count." "There's an urgent need emerging in science and at the gut level to increase the nature experience. This field is just exploding," says Gretchen Daily, a professor of environmental science at Stanford University.
"Spending time in the woods, a practice the Japanese call forest bathing, is strongly linked to lower blood pressure, lower heart rate, and lower stress hormones, as well as decreased anxiety, depression, and fatigue. Scientists have repeatedly found that human anti-cancer natural killer cells--" Sorry, stepping out of the quote for a minute here. Anti-cancer natural killer cells? I didn't know we had those, but I definitely want more of them. Okay, continuing, "Significantly increase after walks in a forest. Cortisol in the blood and adrenaline in the urine significantly decrease the effects lasted at least seven days. The researchers found. Time in a forest is linked to decreased inflammation, which has been implicated in chronic disease."
"People are deciding whether or not this type of coffee bean or that type is better for you. When there is such an obvious health tool at your disposal. You literally just walk outside. People don't know," says Jared Hanley, co-founder and CEO of NaturQuant, a startup working on an app for users to track the time they spend in nature, much like they count steps.
"A study published in nature's scientific reports in 2019 found the 20,000 participants were significantly more likely to report good health and wellbeing when they spent 120 minutes or more in nature each week. The good vibe peak at 200 to 300 minutes a week, anything less than two hours, didn't make a difference."
I hope maybe you're listening to today's show on a walk, run, or bike ride in the woods. Are you tired of sitting at your desk, staring at a screen? Take a walk outside. Are you lonely or bored? Run with a friend or a neighbor? Zoom fatigue got you down. Take your next call, assuming you're not the featured presenter, with the camera turned off, your headphones on and walking outdoors. Are you feeling thirsty? Ride your bike to your favorite watering hole and meet someone there, maybe me, and don't skip the mid-roll. It's got your invitation to the first-ever or WPF listener meetup. Read more at WorkPantsFinance.com/24.
[music]
Laura, it is wonderful to be with you on this beautiful spring morning in May. Everyone that I have on the show has really interesting lives. I wonder, as we start off, if you could just take a minute and tell my listeners a little bit about your story and what you're up to today.
[00:05:04] Laura Calandrella: Matt, we were 14, 15 when we met, so this is--
[00:05:08] Matt: We've known each other a while.
[00:05:10] Laura: This is a really fun podcast for me to do just because there's this arc of my story that you've been part of. I think it maybe begins with where we met, which was in Tucson. It's where I grew up. The desert is my home, and I think that's been a lot of the inception of what my passions are and what my path has been. It's hard to really say what my titles are work-wise. I'll start with my passions instead.
I'm a nature lover. I'm a cycling lover. I want to create really big impact in the world that benefits communities, that benefits the environment. I'm just a really curious person. I often go on these mini-side adventures. One of which this past year was getting my Italian citizenship. Then we'll talk today a lot about another side venture, which was writing a book on collaborative leadership.
A lot of the work that I do right now is facilitating conversations between diverse partners and diverse stakeholders who are interested in accomplishing some environmental goal and their motivations are always different, but they're wanting to come together. They might be coming from the private sector with a government entity with a nonprofit and really asking the question, how do we work together to create change?
I help to facilitate those conversations and help them to design strategies around that. I also do a lot of leadership development work and training leaders to think about how they want to create impact in the world and then how to do it.
[00:06:49] Matt: I had you on the show, both because I wanted to learn more about the book, but also because I love how you work with people in this collaborative leadership model. I look forward to diving more into that. There are a lot of people who listen to Work Pants Finance that will have an interest in that topic.
Before we get there, it's always exciting to see that an old friend wrote a new book. To my knowledge, you're only my second high school peer to have published a book so far. Although, I may be leaving someone out. Laura, I wonder if you could talk a little bit about our next evolution and your hopes in writing it.
[00:07:21] Laura: Yes. People often ask me, why did I write a book or why did I write this book? The very first reason is that I needed to get all of the multiple experiences and what often have felt like very different pathways out of my head and into one place that seemed to make sense. It was a personal learning journey first. Like, "What is it that I am actually doing?" Because I often have a hard time describing what is it that I'm doing?
I'm not an environmental consultant. I'm not solely in leadership development, but I've blended these two areas of expertise and really anytime I'm going into an engagement with the client, I'm using both of those. There is something in what I do and what I bring to the table that allows for people to create change. Part of that's the content expertise, the 20 years of working on environmental and sustainability issues, but then a lot of it has been this commitment to how do we grow ourselves and then, in turn, how do we grow collectively, collaboratively to make a difference.
I created this leadership model within the book that is part what we need to do personally, to grow as leaders, which I define leadership as creating the outcomes that matter most, and so how do we do that personally? Then how do we work with others to collectively create impact in the outcomes that matter most? That was the reason in writing the book. I not only got real clarity about the work that I was doing, but also the continuous journey that I'm on to just be a better human and do better work in the world.
[00:09:12] Matt: One of the things that I think about is that a lot of people would like to write a book, but you actually did write a book and got it published and, as far as I can tell, it's doing great out there. In fact, I love that snippet that you sent out early in the launch when you were ranking ahead of something that Bill Gates had just published at the same time. I haven't kept up on whether that Delta has continued. I wonder, before we talk about the content of the book, could you talk about the process of writing a book?
[00:09:38] Laura: Yes. Everybody does want to write a book. I think that's high on the list of things for people to do. I always have loved writing and there's always been a desire to write a book, but how to get a book out of you is almost an impossible task. As with most things in life, we don't do it on our own. I hired a coach. That's what I did, I hired a coach. Hire help, that's whether it's in finance, whether it's in environmental issues, hire someone to help you.
The process of writing it was asking her to sit down with me. Over a period of about probably 18 hours, she interviewed me. She helped me to design the structure, so what's the north star of the book and then what are the chapter outlines and some key questions underneath it. Then we just talked, she made me talk the book out. We sent that all over to transcripts, tried to organize it in some form or fashion that looked like a rough draft, and it was a rough first draft because I do not speak concepts, [chuckles] as well as I organized them on paper. Then that got handed back to me and I spent a year just rewriting it and several different revisions.
My suggestion is don't do it alone. Hire someone to help you. I’m happy to provide a reference to my person. She's amazing and you have to find the right fit. You have to have the person who's going to understand what you're about and really want to bring it to life in a in a powerful way.
[00:11:13] Matt: Cool. I’d love to feature that recommendation in our show notes today, so thanks for offering that up. As you wrote the book, I’m sure that you had someone in mind that you were writing for. I wonder if you could talk a little bit about who is a great person to read our next evolution.
[00:11:28] Laura: Yes, the people that I’m wanting to read the book and the people that I’m hoping will do something with the book, are on two ends of the spectrum. One, are the group of leaders right now the people who are just stepping into their CEO roles or executive roles, that have the opportunity to really start to think about collaboration at a bigger scale. In the for-profit world I call them, next economy thought leaders.
I do work with a lot of private sector organizations companies, that see sustainability as not just something that provides them social capital or social license to operate, but really see that business can drive change. I’m also writing it for that next generation of leaders who may not see themselves as leaders but are extremely passionate, wanting to make a difference in the world and can have early on, these ideas about how do we grow ourselves and how do we continue to push the edges of what's possible. Then somewhere in the middle, hoping that those two groups come together to work on these issues.
[00:12:35] Matt: Laura, throughout the book, you present an extensive model for collaborative leadership. Just in a few minutes here on the show, can you describe that model?
[00:12:43] Laura: Absolutely. Everyone wants to get to action, that is the first place we want to go, like what is the thing that we need to do? The collaborative leadership model is meant to dial that back to what is it that we need to do before we get to action, and what do we need to continuously put into play as we're acting. I present four different leadership practices and I call them, practices very explicitly because practice--I don't know. I don't know if it ever makes perfect, but we are always going to have to be practicing in order to do better, to be better.
Really quickly, I’ll run through those four. The first is cultivating presence, so getting really present to that question I asked earlier about what matters most. What is the outcome that matters most? What are the values, my personal values that underpin that? How do I express that to others and be able to hear others' purpose and perspective? So getting present, cultivating presence.
The next one is creating space. How do we create the internal spaces for expressing what matters most to us but also those physical environments or even the virtual environments, that allow us to engage with one another in a really open and vulnerable way? Space has become so apparent to us during COVID, the spaces that we're living in, the spaces that we're operating in, so there's a real mindfulness that we have to have about, even the office situations that we're creating for ourselves at home.
It's like inviting somebody to a party. You want to create a space where, if the intention, if the outcome is to have a rockin' party that you don't have like an academic professor coming there to kick it off. How do we create spaces for collaboration that really foster the outcomes that we're looking to achieve?
The third is leveraging diversity, and so that's thinking about who needs to be at the table and how do we even expand our idea of who needs to be at the table when we're working to achieve something together. Obviously, there's so much going on in our social dialogue right now about what diversity means, and I think we're expanding our understanding of that.
In the book, I talk about lived experiences, so it's not just getting the right color person at the table or the right economic stratus at the table, it's really bringing in people who challenge our thinking, people who we may not agree with, that come from different backgrounds than us, to really get to be able to see what the whole problem is that we're trying to address.
Then the last, leadership practices sustaining dialogue. Once we're present with one another, once we've created a space for openness, once we have those diverse perspectives at the table, how do we enter into conversations with one another that invite curiosity, that challenge one another in healthy ways that allow us to discover new pathways for innovation? That sustaining dialogue is really about continuing to improve our communication skills and learn how to communicate human to human, not just what is the action that we need to take.
[00:16:00] Matt: Thank you so much for taking us through a huge part of the book in such a succinct way, I guess it's--
[00:16:06] Laura: Hopefully, succinct. [laughs]
[00:16:07] Matt: Pretty familiar to you at this point. You mentioned, besides collaborative leadership, a personal leadership. I wonder if you could take a minute and relate what you said in the book about collaborative leadership to personal leadership that may be applicable for solo entrepreneurs or folks who are working on projects individually or things like that?
[00:16:29] Laura: Yes, we live in a really complex world, we live in a world that changes so rapidly, we're constantly being inundated with noise and opinions and perspectives that it's hard to get clarity on where we're going. What is our vision for life and what is our deeper purpose for life, what are the unique gifts that we have to offer? In writing the book, one of the things that I’ve noticed is that I’ve had to return to the practices that I’ve put forward in the book.
A question that's been on my mind a lot lately is, what is resonant for me? What are the ways in which I can live that really honor the gifts that I’ve been given, honor the experiences that I’ve been given? I’ve been so fortunate in my life, to have had so many opportunities and also create so many opportunities for myself but even in creating those, there's a way to pay it back.
For me, I’ve been rethinking my next steps, what my next evolution is and, at the heart of it, is really that word of resonance and connecting that resonance to what is resonating in the world, what are people needing to hear, what are people needing to see as examples of powerful ways forward in a world that right now feels so divisive. Does that get to that personal leadership? How do you see personal leadership as you hear me describe that?
[00:17:59] Matt: Yes, no that's a way to turn it around on the interviewer, great job. I guess, I would say I think I hear and resonate with everything that you've said. I wonder if you could share any tactics, examples or specific practices that you are employing or hope to employ to take that philosophy that you just outlined and put it to work. Not because philosophy is not important, in fact, philosophy is where we got to start, but then sometimes it can help to bridge that gap for people to ways that you're putting that to work in your own life.
[00:18:32] Laura: Right. I’ve had to dial things back a lot lately. One of the questions that I love to pose to my coaching clients, I also do executive coaching, when they're trying to navigate towards some bigger vision but feeling really lost is, okay, let's ask, what is the experience that I want to have of myself today? Not, what's on my to-do list, what do I need to get done today? As people who are your audience, is really driven and I’m sure can accomplish to-do lists like no other, but what is the experience that I want to have of myself as I go through those things today?
That's a question that I start off with at the beginning of the day. I journal every single day to clear my mind. I try as much as I can when I’m working out to do that outside, instead of in a gym or on my trainer at home, just because I find that I hear my breath better. I am connected to the sounds around me better. Then even just maybe more practically, you and I were talking about this before we got on the podcast today, I’ve been really intentionally trying to keep myself off of video calls lately, as much as possible.
[00:19:40] Matt: Sorry.
[00:19:41] Laura: [laughs] No, no this is great. This is really good but looking at my week ahead of time and saying how much bandwidth do I have to be on video calls today, and then giving myself CEO days as well. I run my own business and I find that if I don't truly hold myself to a day that's blocked off completely for strategy, bigger thinking, or even just getting some of those things done that are content creation or more marketing related, if I don't give myself that space, it's never going to happen, or I'll end up doing it on a weekend, which, no, thank you.
I was like writing out this bucket list of where I want my work to go, and I'm like, "I would love to be able to take a year off some time to work on creative projects." I'm like, "How about a day off, Laura?"
[00:20:29] Matt: Start with the day.
[00:20:30] Laura: Exactly. Just a day, do that first.
[music]
[00:20:37] Matt: Today's episode is brought to you by East Pole Coffee Company at 255 Ottley Drive Northeast in Atlanta. Who knows, if you stop by for a cup, you might run into Laura. Now, here are the promised meetup details. If you listen to Work Pants Finance, you're invited to House of Hops on Glenwood Avenue in Raleigh on Thursday, July 1st at 4:00 PM. Reach me at workpantsfinance.com/contact, or on LinkedIn, or Facebook, or Twitter with any questions. I hope to see you there.
[music]
[00:21:12] Matt: One of the parts of the book that really resonated with me was an anecdote where you shared an experience talking to wildland firefighters, and you wrote, "Old pathways get in the way of accessing new solutions." I wonder if you could just briefly recap that story, and how you came to that insight. Then maybe I'll ask follow-up after that.
[00:21:31] Laura: The story and the book focuses on a training that I was doing with wildland firefighters. I worked a lot with the wildland firefighter community in the last job that I worked for someone else. You have to remember, as any of you can imagine, that these people are in really, really high-risk situations on a regular basis. Leadership development is extremely important to them because every day they're leading others through situations that can lead to fatalities.
One of their core values is safety, obviously, it's primary, human life first, and then, also communities and houses and all of that, but safety of themselves and others. There's a mantra that runs through their culture that everyone comes home every day, and yet that's not true, everyone does not come home every day.
That is a belief or assumption or even a value that they try to hold that, while aspirational and hopeful, and I do hope that everyone comes home every day, it gets in their way of actually communicating, communicating effectively, or even seeing situations that could lead to fatalities. I was implementing a lot of the leadership practices that I teach in my book, subconsciously. I asked them to just start to challenge some of their beliefs around that, but even just more simply in their own life.
The story in the book is that one of the firefighters on his way home that night, instead of unconsciously driving home, as we so often do really, started to pay attention to everything that was around him, opening up his senses by rolling down the windows, really paying attention to the left versus the right turn, seeing what was in front of him.
The result was that, when he got home at dinner that night, he was much more aware of the personal connections that he was having with his wife and his girls. You reflect that back the next day, it's not like that's the major shift that's going to change the safety culture of the wildland firefighting community. It was this idea of how do we become more present to what's going on around us, instead of just subconsciously relying on those things that we think are always true. How do we challenge our mindsets in ways that make us more aware of what's going on?
[00:23:54] Matt: Following up on that, I wonder, do you have any thoughts on generalizing that to life or to personal finance?
[00:24:04] Laura: Yes, I do.
[00:24:05] Matt: Great. Lay it on us.
[00:24:06] Laura: I hope I do, otherwise, I might be out of a job. Through evolution, we are programmed to limit the number of decisions that we have to make on any given day. We want to have assumptions in place that help us to not touch a hot stove or to have to look left or right every time we cross the street, that's good, that's necessary. When we are trying to grow, when we're trying to create more impact in our life, or in the world, or families, or communities, when we're wanting to do anything different, we have to challenge the beliefs and assumptions we have about the world, about the way things work in the world.
Very small example, big goal, but I did an Iron Man several years back. I had to challenge my own beliefs and assumptions about my physical limitations, and there's all sorts of mindsets that I have to create throughout that journey from never having run more than a 10K and never having ridden a bike, besides as a kid to doing this 140-mile journey all at one time. Athletics is a great metaphor for that because we can break it down and understand it very simply.
Money is another great one. We establish our money mindsets very young. Our parents teach us about what money is, what it offers, puts a lot of fear in us around losing money, or if we're on the other end of the spectrum, perhaps teaches us about abundance, or what wealth creation looks like. No matter what, we have beliefs about money. If money is one area, finances are one area that we want to grow. I think, first, it starts with understanding what our mindset is about that. What is our money story? What do we believe that money does? What do we believe that money creates? What do we believe our access to money is?
I think whether it's doing an Iron Man or creating a personal finance situation that really is beneficial to whatever it is that you're wanting to achieve in life, we have to understand where we are, and understand what's getting in our way, which is usually a fear or a worry. Sometimes it can get as deep as like, "I'm going to lose everything and I'll never be able to X, Y, or Z fill in the blank," and start to challenge those.
You challenge them in little ways, like what would happen if, like what would happen if I just ran half a mile longer today than I did yesterday? We can't take it all on in one big chunk. We have to challenge it in very small ways, so we can prove that the way we think the world works may not be how the world works.
[00:26:51] Matt: I think that's great. I love breaking things up into achievable chunks and working on them that way. I think that the reminder that, a lot of times what gets in our way is what's in our heads, it can't really be said too often. Laura, your comments about cultivating presence really resonated with me. Can you speak a little bit about what that looks like at a detailed or implementation level for business leaders and entrepreneurs?
[00:27:19] Laura: Yes. Present space practices, I think, are one of the most important ways that business leaders, entrepreneurs can really get clear about what they want and how to achieve it. It's a daily thing and a weekly thing and a monthly thing. For me, I mentioned earlier, I journal every day. I have a practice, it's the first thing that I do when I get up.
Sometimes it's just random stream of consciousness, but sometimes there are key questions that I have as soon as I wake up. Sometimes I wake up and I'm creative about something, but it's getting clear on what's going on for me internally, so it's not running the show the rest of the day, so that I know, "Oh, wow, this is really on my mind," and I can either clear it out or be aware of it.
Meditation for some people, I have a lot of coaching clients who read scripture every day. What is the daily practice that you come to? Nature for me is another one. I don't get outside every single day into nature, but on a weekly basis, or definitely, every other weekend making time for being off my device and even leaving it at home, that's sometimes difficult. The days where I accidentally forget my phone if I'm out for a few hours are like magic. I don't have a podcast to listen to. Sorry, Matt. I don't have a podcast to listen to.
[00:28:38] Matt: That's all right. These times you should step away.
[00:28:40] Laura: I don't have a podcast to listen to. I have to find my own way. I can't use Google maps to get me somewhere. It's just allowing space for stillness and really, really connecting to ourselves, therapy, and coaching, anything that gives you a window into who you are and what you're about.
[00:29:00] Matt: I love the comment about the device. I'm not by any means diligent about this, but I often try at 6:00 or 6:30 to just go put it on the charger and not look at it again, until after I've done my morning practices, the following morning, sometime after 7:00 AM. The other thing there that I like to do when I run outside, which I try to do at least three times a week, is sometimes if I just want the run to go fast, I'll just listen to a Stephen King audiobook.
A lot of times I will listen to a podcast or something more self-improvement-y for maybe half the run, and then turn off the audio and just noodle on that content as I finish up the back half of whatever it is that I'm up to. I think that those are two things, so leaving the device on the charger for 15 hours a day, and then segmenting the run between when I'm taking stuff in and when I'm giving my brain a place to process it. I think that those are the things that have been helpful to me that are similar to what you're describing.
[00:29:58] Laura: I would love to give your audience is a resource that I find really inspiring.
[00:30:03] Matt: Great, we're all about resources here. Sorry.
[00:30:06] Laura: Good. It's actually a quite old video, Tiffany Shlain, who I'm not even going to be able to describe what she does. She does a lot of really cool videos that are science-backed but she presents them in a really interesting way. She has one on the science of daydreaming that I will share with you because it just talks about what happens in our brain when we allow ourselves to daydream without devices.
[00:30:31] Matt: [laughs] Laura, I wonder, as we've talked through this collaborative leadership model if there's anything that you haven't mentioned, that is suitable for a podcast, could you talk about what one action you would most like people to take to interact with, what you've shared about collaborative leadership in the book?
[00:30:48] Laura: Besides what I've already mentioned about some of the practices to do on a daily basis, which I think those are really, really simple, because we don't necessarily need anyone else to do them, is I really think it's important right now to make sure that in our massive consumption of media and perspectives, that we find someone, some voice that is different than ours to learn from.
That also needs to be a practice of mindfulness. I'm not asking that you suddenly-- I'm asking you to be thoughtful too in who you choose. That it is somebody who's offering a different perspective, but that they are also being thoughtful about the perspective that they're offering, not just offering more noise.
I think that that's the way that we learn. I think that that's the beauty of this massive amount of information, is that we have so many different perspectives available to us. We get caught in that, gosh, in the YouTube cycle that just keeps drowning you and taking you deeper and deeper into your own perspective versus really looking outside for who is different.
One of the things that I like to do is on my Instagram, I'm very active on Instagram, is I like to just look for those topics that people might be hashtagging that are similar to mine, but look for a very different perspective or a very different person that might be challenging what I'm saying about my work or how I think.
[00:32:15] Matt: I think that's super and interacts with a ton of what this show is about. One is, this isn't exactly what you said, but I'm all about limiting media consumption because, in Stephen Covey's Circle of Influence circle of concern model, most of what you can read in the newspaper versus see on YouTube isn't probably something that you can interact with and change or make better anyway.
Then, two, I'm always sharing on this show and featuring guests with whom I don't necessarily-- I don't have to agree with everything that a guest thinks or even everything that they publish. I love working through material and gleaning what I can perhaps being challenged. I don't have to agree with someone in order to benefit from what they're sharing.
In fact, the more we insist on that, the more insular, narrow, and probably unhappy that we become. I like that Work Pants Finance is a space where we can feature different voices and take lots of value from each. Thanks for being part of that.
[00:33:18] Laura: Yes. Well, thank you. I think it's cool. In doing that, we were talking about how do we challenge beliefs and assumptions and mindsets, just allowing ourselves to be challenged is we learn how to be challenged. We learn what it feels like to be challenged, and we learn how to choose our responses to being challenged. That helps us in all areas of life.
[00:33:38] Matt: Laura, I've talked a lot on this show about taking local action. I've gotten very local in what I've described in terms of family neighborhood, pursuing one's values where you can actually do something about it. I wonder how you think about small local actions as they relate to big global goals? This was actually a theme of another large interview on this show with Blair Shepherd several weeks ago.
[00:34:03] Laura: It's one of the questions that I get asked most often is, what action can I take because these big global goals seem so overwhelming, and not to point back to the collaborative leadership model, but there's a few things outlined there. For me, it is staying aware of what my values are. Even being able to say, "Here are my values," that's difficult for a lot of people.
I think we're not taught how to do that at an early age. I think we get caught in this idea of the organizational workplace values, like this laundry list of things that sound really good and are really aspirational, but they mean nothing. They have no residents, to use the word we used earlier.
[00:34:47] Matt: Also someone else's, typically.
[00:34:48] Laura: Yes. Really, one of my highest values is freedom. What freedom means to me and what freedom means to you, Matt, is totally different or could be totally different, right. Just as a side note, one of my definitions of money is freedom. Stewardship is another one, right.
[00:35:07] Matt: I think we're aligned on those two.
[00:35:09] Laura: Yes. Getting clear on what those values are, and then how do they relate to those bigger goals. Freedom for me, it means that I have freedom to choose what products I'm buying from a sustainability standpoint or from a social consciousness standpoint. Freedom for me means that, as an entrepreneur, even though I often get overwhelmed by my schedule, also means that I can go spend two weeks in Tucson with my parents, they're in their 70s, to share that time with them. I don't have to be told what to do.
That honors wrapped up in freedom for me, it's also freedom of choice to be with family. I think that, if you can understand those three or four, five values that are most important to you, and then if global goals are also important to understand how to use those values to connect to them, then that's a place to start.
Again, coaches are really good at drawing that out of you, all different kinds of coaches. Even noticing what kinds of people you're drawn to can help you to start to formulate what are those things that I need to be present in my life in order to find meaning and fulfillment.
[00:36:20] Matt: I talk a lot on this show and with clients about values informing one's financial plan because at the end of the day, my belief is that the money is there in support of one's values. For any listeners out there, if you haven't ever done this, my first crack at clarifying a statement of personal values was actually a Stanford Graduate School of Business admissions essay. The prompt was just “What is important to you and why?” It's a pretty basic prompt.
That essay that I wrote for that school where I did not get in, has continued to live with me, and has evolved and informed a lot of the big decisions that we've made as a family over the past two decades. I appreciated the GSB for their prompt, even if they didn't ultimately want me at Stanford. [laughs]
[00:37:08] Laura: Duke won on that one.
[00:37:09] Matt: Okay. I think the Miner family won. We're glad that we're here at the southeast.
[00:37:14] Laura: Well, let me just jump in with one other prompt that might be helpful for your listeners. This is a common one we use in coaching is for you to describe a peak experience in your life. Thinking over the course of your life, what has been a peak experience for you? Really getting into as granular of detail as what was going on at the time, who was there, what were you doing.
If you're not a writer to just talk it out, just interview yourself and record it. If you go back through and you listen or read to what you've written, you can start to see themes that are speaking to what values you were living at the time that then might help you to refine.
[00:37:54] Matt: Absolutely, that's another great recommendation. Thank you, Laura, for sharing that. I wonder, as you think about your environmental goals or goals for the planet, how do you see them being achieved and how should ordinary people think about participating in that?
[00:38:09] Laura: Yes, there's a theme that runs throughout the book, throughout my life, throughout everything that I do in my work, which is relationship, putting relationship at the center of solving our most pressing challenges. Those most pressing challenges could be personal, they could be in our families, our communities, our nations, and our global community. How do we learn to be in relationship to one another in a way that creates an ever-expanding world of possibilities?
Let's just talk about it on a family level. We really work on the relationships with our families. Through them, we learn more, we help amplify who they are, and lift up who they are. They go out and create these concentric circles with everyone that they touch. Going back to that idea of finding people who challenge us or our thinking, it's not that they need to be our best friends, or that we have to agree with them, but how do we open ourselves even to maybe just even creating openness with those communities and understanding where we might find intersection.
This is just in full transparency and vulnerability. Relationships have often been a challenge for me in my personal life. Maybe that's why I'm working it out through my work. I also know that, as I've been able to strengthen relationships over time, the support that I've had, and my ability to really step into who I am has only improved. I think it's not easy, but it's a really simple step to take.
[00:39:41] Matt: I wanted to ask you, maybe it's the only I think question that I thought of is a little bit challenging in this interview. Sometimes when I think about environmental goals, I perceive winners and losers at the implementation level. I wonder, do you perceive that or is there always a win-win opportunity? How do you think about going about putting this stuff to work in a way that is respectful of the relationships that you just described as being at the center of it all?
[00:40:08] Laura: There often feels like there are winners and losers. My job, and what I always am there for is how do we create those win-win opportunities, and this might feel like a cop out, but I hope it's not. Oftentimes, the challenge is getting to a shared agenda that's at a high enough level, so that we can all see that we're orienting towards the same thing.
I don't think there's anybody on the planet who would say, "We want the destruction of our natural resources." That's nobody's goal, or, "We want people living in extreme poverty," nobody's goal. It's finding the right scale of bringing people together, obviously, eliminating global poverty would be amazing, but that's so big that how do you wrap your arms around it, and I'm not operating on that scale with my clients.
I think it's finding a common agenda, finding the shared vision that's at a big enough scale, recognizing that underneath that there are shared strategies for achieving it that may be very different. You may not be aligning to one of those strategies, but it's the combination of strategies that's going to get you to that goal.
Then at an implementation level, we're all doing something in our own worker or our own companies, organizations, businesses, whatever it is, that is going to be different. The idea that I like to put into place is, how do we find the thing that's mutually beneficial at the strategy level with the thing that you're doing at the personal or organizational level?
Win-lose, I think, as the book says, it's an evolution. We have to keep evolving in that direction. I definitely know that we've created a society where that's the dynamic. The call is to something different, so how do we start to think in new and different ways?
[00:41:58] Matt: I'm all for something different, so thanks for bringing that together that way. Well, Laura, it's been a great conversation. You've been generous with your time and with your insights. I wonder if you have anything that I didn't ask that you'd like to share, any last comments, and anybody that you would like people to follow up from today's interview?
[00:42:15] Laura: I love that you are putting personal finance out there in a new in a different light and making it fun to talk about.
[00:42:25] Matt: Who would have thought that I'd be the advocate for that?
[00:42:27] Laura: [laughs] I think I'll go back to that thought of what does money mean to you, and what does it provide, or what can it provide in terms of the work that I'm passionate about in creating sustainability in a sustainable future. The way we think about money, the way we use money, the way we interact with money is a huge component of the solution. I want to emphasize and underscore the connection there.
Then people can find me-- three places that you'll find me, my website, which is this constant in development kind of thing. [laughs]
[00:43:00] Matt: That's everybody's website.
[00:43:01] Laura: [laughs] I'm there. I'm there all the time. All my contact information is there, LinkedIn, and then on Instagram. I'm on other socials, but that's where you're primarily going to see me show up.
[00:43:11] Matt: All right. Well, we'll link out to all those along with the Tiffany Shlain video, and there was one other resource we were going to include as well. We'll figure that out after we get off the call. All right. Laura, it's been so wonderful to talk to you today. Thank you again, and we'll talk soon.
[00:43:26] Laura: Great to see you, Matt.
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[00:43:28] Matt: Huge thanks to Laura for bringing her big heart and unique wisdom to our conversation today. Three quick takeaway items from the show. First, if you've got a mammoth project, like writing a book or making a financial plan, get help and follow a process. Second, to make gains in your health or money, get outside and move. It's cheap and delightful. Third, watch the Tiffany Shlain video linked at workpantsfinance.com/24. Then turn off your screens and let your mind wander.
If dreaming was important to Thomas Edison and Salvador Dali, it won't hurt you and me either. Now, I'm turning off all my screens and headed out for a run in the woods. Since there's no gasoline in the southeast right now, I'm going to ride my bike to the trailhead too.
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[00:44:17] Female Speaker: Matt Miner is a fee-only fiduciary financial advisor and founder and CEO of Miner Wealth Management, a North Carolina registered investment advisor where Matt provides personalized unconflicted advice to clients for a fee. He's also my dad, so please be nice when you talk to him.
Matt is a certified financial planner professional and holds a Series 65 securities license. He earned his bachelor's degree in finance from Arizona State University and his MBA from Duke University's Fuqua School of Business. Work Pants Finance is Matt's financial media business where he talks about work, entrepreneurship, kids and money, taxes, investing, and other personal finance topics.
Workpantsfinance.com exists to share wisdom and provide general financial information which is not financial tax or legal advice. If you're an individual and probably needs personal advice for your specific situation, you should consider building relationships with helpful, caring, and competent professionals who understand your unique context and can provide advice that is tailored to your needs.
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