The Come Up Episode 18 Video Transcript
Scrappy:
What up, what up, what up, what up? Welcome to the Come Up: a video podcast featuring Southwest Florida entrepreneurs and business leaders. I’m Scrappy, and we’re sponsored by Content with Teeth, a creative content agency with over 20 years of experience right here in southwest Florida. As you can see from this fat head, they do things big, really big, specializing in copywriting and video production.
They’ve got content if you need it. If you’d like to sponsor the come up or be a guest, hit me up at HeyScrappy on IG, or Mike at 21,000. You can just text them. Today’s guest is Carrie LaDue, owner of the business consulting firm, Limitless Business of Fort Myers. She’s fascinating. She approaches business solutions and chief’s peak performance. Really amazing. She’s trained or coached a remarkable 15,000 leaders. Carrie, is that true?
Dr. Carrie LaDue:
It’s very true, yes.
Scrappy:
15,000 leaders. How could that possibly be?
Dr. Carrie LaDue:
Large events, large live events and large virtual events, full of thousands of people who registered.
Scrappy:
Were these your events?
Dr. Carrie LaDue:
Both. It’s been lot of collaborations, as well as my own business, yes.
Scrappy:
I understand right before the pandemic, you had a business. It was a struggle, an interesting journey, and then you sold it. Can you tell us about that?
Dr. Carrie LaDue:
I did, yes. At the, right about the beginning of the pandemic, I launched a business for female entrepreneurs who were needing to start their own businesses. Whether they were coaches, or consultants, or it ran the gamut in terms of what their businesses were, but they were looking to do something differently, either because they were tired of what they had been doing and they wanted to take control of their life, or like so many people, they had lost their income, or their partner had lost their income at the beginning of the pandemic.
I helped these women launch their first businesses, get them fully booked with clients, and I grew that business, scaled that business, and then sold that business in just two years’ time.
Scrappy:
Very nice. Very nice. What’s really cool about your business is that you’re actually helping people. You’re very generous with your time.
Dr. Carrie LaDue:
I am. Helping people is what keeps me going every single day. Money is sort of the, it’s like the bonus of business, but when you’re doing work that you really love, that really lights you up, it doesn’t ever feel like a job.
Scrappy:
Yeah, it keeps you motivated, for sure. For sure. Limitless Business, tell us about it.
Dr. Carrie LaDue:
Well, Limitless Business, while I was growing this other business that was called Find Your Flow that was sold, I was always working with larger businesses as well, larger companies, 30 plus employees and that kind of a thing on the side. I had just been doing executive coaching work for so long that I had retained some of those clients. I have a background in organizational development. There’s something about larger businesses that’s really enticing. They’re messy, they’re complex, they’re dynamic organizations. I’ve always really enjoyed trying to shift cultures in those organizations, and help those people become really happy and healthy and thriving.
You can have a business that’s successful, your PNLs look great, but if your people are stressed out, not happy, not thriving, to me, it’s a missed opportunity. Your business can be a real force for good in this world if you take really good care of your people. That’s really what Limitless Business is about. We work with small to mid-size businesses who are really interested in taking things to the next level. That’s not just about doubling revenue and doubling profits, but it’s about unleashing the potential in themselves and in their people.
I don’t think that you have to sacrifice wellbeing, sanity, health, happiness, and those things to be massively successful. That’s really what we help people do.
Scrappy:
I noticed you have an HR bent to your consultancy.
Dr. Carrie LaDue:
Well, whenever you’re talking about a full business and you’re touching every aspect, from the CEO to the leadership team to the rest of the staff, I would say that’s organizational development. There’s definitely, can be an HR component. We don’t necessarily contract with people to get involved in their HR, but if you want to sustain change in an organization, you typically have to back up any sort of training or development with policy changes as well.
Scrappy:
Sure.
Dr. Carrie LaDue:
They do touch each other for sure.
Scrappy:
One of your key words is peak performance, and I think that’s interesting. Can you tell us more about it?
Dr. Carrie LaDue:
Think about elite athletes, right? The difference between an elite athlete and somebody who just plays in their community softball team, an elite athlete has to take really great care of themselves in order to achieve what they achieve, whether they’re in the Olympics, or they’re competing globally, whatever that is. They need coaches. They need mentors. They need discipline. They have to fuel their mind, their body, and their soul with things that help them achieve, be their very best selves. That’s what peak performance is about.
What we’ve done is taken everything that we know, the science of peak performance, the art of peak performance, and we’ve integrated into the context of business. I like to think about my leaders that we work with as they’re like elite athletes, just in the business context. How can we help them be super well rested, super well-nourished, super clear of mind, clear of thought, so that they enjoy the hell out of their days while they’re building their empires?
Scrappy:
It’s a great analogy. I like that. I like that a lot. Carrie, you go into an office, you go into a new business, you have a new client. The first day, what are you trying to ascertain?
Dr. Carrie LaDue:
We’re trying to get a sense of what’s really going on there by speaking to other people. There is somewhat of a diagnostic process. Is the leader’s perception about what’s happening in the business the same perception that the people around the leader has? Where might some of their blind spots be? Where the opportunities is really what we’re looking for, but we’re not just looking for what are the things that are going wrong? You can’t actually build on that. We as humans have to build on our successes. We have to know what our strengths are, and we have to double down on those strengths.
Yes, we’re looking for where are things that could be improved, but I’m very much looking for what are you actually good at? What are you good at as a leader? What are you good at as a business, and what are the things that maybe you’re all doing that don’t align to that? Let’s consider maybe getting rid of that and getting more focused on the things that we’re actually really good at.
Scrappy:
Okay. You say strengths, you say opportunities. That’s half of a SWAT analysis. What about the threats and weaknesses?
Dr. Carrie LaDue:
Well, yeah, it depends on the work that we’re doing with a client, but if they’re in an industry where they’re not positioned right, if they don’t have a market dominating position, and that needs to be reworked, those are all things that we absolutely need to look at too.
Scrappy:
You have a team. Can you tell us about them?
Dr. Carrie LaDue:
Yeah, so I have a small but mighty team, a mixture of people with a variety of backgrounds, but they’re all very experienced in terms of helping people transform into being the very best versions of themselves. They run the gambit, from somebody who has a multiple time CEO, both here in the states and overseas, to somebody who’s built her own small business and done coaching, and a business development person.
We are small but powerful, and work together collectively to make sure our clients, we play to our strengths too in terms of that.
Scrappy:
Carrie, they’re all women. What’s up with that?
Dr. Carrie LaDue:
Yeah. It’s actually not super intentional. We don’t discriminate against men. As we add to our team, we will probably see some more diversity there, but it’s just the way it’s worked out so far. They’re rock stars at what they do, so I’m going to keep them around.
Scrappy:
There’s a lot of leaders in leader positions that really shouldn’t be leaders. How do you break it to them?
Dr. Carrie LaDue:
We get feedback from the people that they’re leading. We always try to coach people up. We try to help them become leaders. Most people are very coachable. I would say 98% of the people we’ve ever worked with are very coachable, and they can close their gaps and become better leaders. There are outliers that are better off doing the work than leading other people, but those are few and far between.
We collect feedback, we collect evidence, and we say, “Look, here’s what people are saying, here’s what you’re good at, here’s what you’re struggling with.” Then we set goals around that, and we coach them towards those goals. Most of the time, it’s really unfair. People are labeled as being a bad leader, but nobody is giving them any information in terms of what that really means, why that’s bad leadership, what good leadership is, and how to do things differently.
I have found that most people, with a little bit of coaching and feedback, actually can grow in this way pretty quickly.
Scrappy:
You’re very optimistic. There’s a lot of people out there that can’t lead.
Dr. Carrie LaDue:
Yeah, I’m sure there are. The people that we encounter in terms of clientele, like I said, those people who can’t lead, they’re the outliers. I think a lot of people can lead and lead well when they are given the right tools and strategies and support. What I think we shouldn’t assume is that everybody can lead without that or just naturally. You deserve to be developed in that area, just like you would learn how to do anything else that you wanted to get really good at.
Scrappy:
You’re a serial entrepreneur, you’re a leader, you’re a director, you’re a business consultant, and you worked so hard. You had a migraine for two months and you had to be hospitalized for 10 days. Tell us about that.
Dr. Carrie LaDue:
Yes. 2013-ish, maybe, it was a long, very long time ago, I was getting sicker and sicker. I had never had a migraine and then suddenly I had one, and then two, and then 15 a month, and then 63 days in a row, I was in a state of migraine. Went to multiple different emergency rooms, IVs, drugs, and nothing would get any better. It was a combination of things.
It was working too hard, too much, no boundaries, not saying no, thinking that I had to be all things to all people, really demanding work and position and deadlines, but at the root of it, just really not standing up for myself, thinking that I sort of had to take it. That’s just not true. You have to take care of yourself first and foremost. Nobody else is going to do that for you.
Scrappy:
What you just said is like 99% of the population: you feel obligated to your boss. You got to do things to no end. You got to take a deep breath and say, “You know what? I got to do something for me every once in a while.”
Dr. Carrie LaDue:
Yeah, you do. You can’t expect other people to suddenly change, for company culture to change, for them to think that you’re more valuable than anybody else necessarily. You have to put your own needs first. Nobody is going to put your needs first, other than you. The sooner you learn that in life, the better. A lot of people are a little disillusioned about that. If I work harder, I’ll stand out more, and they’ll care about me more, and they’ll reward me more. That’s not necessarily true.
Scrappy:
How to books say that though. You got to outwork the competition.
Dr. Carrie LaDue:
Yeah, I think that’s total BS. I think it’s really outdated programming that we need to let go of. This isn’t just my experience, like you said, like 99% of the population. One of the reasons why I started doing the work that I do with leaders and why I’m still so motivated to do it is because I was watching my colleagues follow the same path. Maybe theirs wasn’t migraines, maybe theirs was like a mystery illness, or a cancer diagnosis, or for men, they would end up in the emergency room thinking they’re having a heart attack to find out it was anxiety.
It was like, this has to change. This isn’t sustainable. Unless you’re going to love yourself enough to change your situation, you have to make the decision that you deserve more and you deserve better.
Michael Barnes:
Hi, I’m Michael Barnes, owner of Content with Teeth. We are a creative content agency in southwest Florida. We specialize in copywriting and video production, with over two decades of experience creating boring content. If you struggle to create compelling stuff for your business or client, check us out at Contentwithteeth.com. Now, back to our show.
Scrappy:
I was in South Carolina working at a radio station, and probably weekly, my boss would come down the hall and yell at me, “Scrappy, Scrappy.” I got really frustrated, I got upset. It was definitely anxiety for me. Then after a while, I read the book, Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff. Then I said, “Oh, that’s Teresa coming down the hall. That’s Teresa being Teresa.” That was my coping mechanism. What other coping mechanisms do you teach your preach?
Dr. Carrie LaDue:
Yeah, so that is really huge. That’s kind of a part of the work that we do. All battles are in between these two in right here. They’re all up in your head. The state of anxiety that we create for ourselves can become really chronic, where your mind always goes to the worst case scenario. We have negativity bias. One of the things that we do is we really teach our people to look at what’s happening in your brain, and step back and assess it, and analyze it. Is that fact, or is that fiction?
When you start to realize that you are sort of your own worst enemy, based on what you’re telling yourself on a day-to-day basis about every single situation, that’s massively eye-opening for people. What we’ve seen as just within one or two sessions, people who have been struggling with anxiety, it’s reversed. They realize that it was all just the story they were saying to themselves in their head. If you can get in control of that dialogue, you are truly limitless. That is really the thing that gets in our way.
Scrappy:
I love what you’re saying, and I agree with you. Work-life balance though, how can we achieve it? How can we do a better job with our work-life balance based on what you just told us?
Dr. Carrie LaDue:
Well, the number one thing is you have to believe that it’s possible. A lot of people will, if you’re in disbelief, if you’re like, “This is just the way life is, I’m just going to accept this,” well, then that’s going to be your reality. If you believe that you can thrive financially and have the resources and the revenue and the income that you need, whether that be from a business or your job, and if you believe that you can do that, and also not sacrifice your personal wellness, your time, time with family, time with friends, then you can create that.
It all starts with belief. Once you have that belief, then you start saying, “Okay, what are my goals? What’s my roadmap? What’s my next little tiny step I’m going to take to get there?” Most people get stalled out, because they think they have to have the whole damn plan. They have to know A to Z. That’s not realistic. You just have to have the vision and say, “What’s just the very next thing that I need to do?” Eventually, you move forward and you create a different situation for yourself.
Scrappy:
So far in this conversation, I bet your clients say, “Carrie, you’re a breath of fresh air.”
Dr. Carrie LaDue:
I hope so.
Scrappy:
From a productivity perspective, how do you drive results?
Dr. Carrie LaDue:
It’s a combination of everything that we do. You have to have a good strategy underneath it. You need to know where you’re headed. You need to know what your goals are like. You need to know how you’re going to get to where you want to go as a business and as a company. Most people stop there. What we have found is that you can have the greatest strategy on paper, but if you don’t learn to change people’s behaviors, it doesn’t really matter.
We use a combination of tools and strategies that we teach our clients that help them quadruple their productivity. Within the first 90 days of working with people, they increase their staffing capacity by one and a half people per person, per week without adding any new staff. That’s simply by teaching people how to be more productive. More productive doesn’t mean you do more work, it means you work differently. That’s what we do.
Scrappy:
What about marketing? Marketing and promotions and so forth? When I think of it, I’m a consultant myself, I’ll get into that in a second. When I think of marketing, I think we really need to identify who the product is. We need to create a niche. We need to know the audience. We need to of course do a SWAT analysis as far as the competition is concerned, image, branding. One thing that I preach too is self-actualization in terms of the product. How does self-actualization play a role in your consulting?
Dr. Carrie LaDue:
That’s what we’re aiming for. That’s the whole reason we do what we do. I think that myself and my team are fairly self-actualized. We walk the walk. Of course, I still have ways to grow. I always will, but we live what we preach and what we teach. It keeps me honest, quite frankly. Some of the reasons why I teach what I teach is because I know that I lean towards the hustle and the grind and the overachieving.
If I have an entire business that is about you being a peak performer and helping you to have balance and be healthy and thrive and eat well and work out and all of those things, that keeps me and my team really honest. I can’t coach people on those things and be out of alignment and integrity about that.
Scrappy:
Right.
Dr. Carrie LaDue:
That’s why we do what we do because I’m a bit obsessive about it. I’m a personal development junkie. I just figured out a way to take my passion and share it with other people.
Scrappy:
I know it’s variable, but product centricity versus customer centricity. Do you have a lean?
Dr. Carrie LaDue:
I think it’s hard for me to think product because I think service. For us, we’re a service-based business. We have tools that help us provide our service. For me, it’s all about the client and getting the results from the client, for the client. There’s probably multiple different ways that we can go about that, but I’m always going to start with what are the results that they need, and what is the best, fastest way with the least amount of friction that I can get them there?
The product, I don’t really care about. I care about creating the thing that is going to help them get the results that they’re looking for.
Scrappy:
Okay. My consultancy is a lot different than yours. I consult a TV station in Jamaica and a radio station in The Bahamas.
Dr. Carrie LaDue:
Cool.
Scrappy:
Over the years, I had Antigua, I had different places. I had Guam. My specialty to differentiate myself as a consultant, because I didn’t have the pedigree that you do, I had to create something like the Caribbean consultant. What I would do is go into a company and really have the benefit, like you, of working with an owner, right there beside the owner, which is awesome. It’s not a corporation. Saying, “Okay, what are your goals?” Defining them, ascertaining and taking inventory of what they have and so forth.
One of the problems that I’ve had is I’ll go in, I’ll train the people, we’ll practice, I’ll stay with them on the phone, I’ll stay with them on the internet. Basically, as soon as I leave, after one or two weeks of hoo-rah, there’s a major drop off. How do you sustain?
Dr. Carrie LaDue:
You stick with them long enough to make sure that the changes actually are legitimate.
Scrappy:
I wish I could. I wish I could stay in Jamaica and the Bahamas long enough.
Dr. Carrie LaDue:
Virtually. Virtually working with them. The tricky thing about working with change and creating change in businesses and with people is that we fall back into our old ways of doing and being so easily. I always say that you’re going to default to what’s familiar. What we’ve been talking about, or training, if you’re a consultant, what you’re teaching people, that’s unfamiliar. You have to make that unfamiliar familiar. You have to cross that divide, that chasm, where the new behavior takes hold. That takes some time.
We don’t work with people unless we have 90 days minimum that I’ll work with somebody. At 90 days, they’ve had some really great results, but they’re like, “Carrie, I’m just getting started. Let’s keep going.” I’m like, “Cool, let’s keep going.”
Scrappy:
Right. Sure.
Dr. Carrie LaDue:
Behavior change, it takes time. You’ve got all these different things that are kind of your own mind, your neural patterning, your family, your friends, your contacts, all these things that are kind of like, you have to fight through to really change and do things differently.
Scrappy:
Sure.
Dr. Carrie LaDue:
That’s just the way it is.
Scrappy:
I guess my hurdle is cultural. It’s a huge vast difference between how I see things and how island life sees things. A great case study is the ad agency work that you just did. Can you tell us about it?
Dr. Carrie LaDue:
Oh, yeah. We have a client that is an advertising agency. They’ve been around for about eight years. They have three co-founders, incredible people. Incredible leaders, care so much about their people, care so much about their clients. The advertising industry, what I’ve come to learn over the years is that it’s notorious for a very, kind of like a burn and churn culture. The client wants something. They say “Jump,” you say, “How high?” Very reactionary. There’s a lot of fear. If we don’t do this thing for this client right now, we’re going to lose them.
What that does is that creates that culture where people feel like they’re on call. It’s just, it’s hard. The interesting thing about the advertising industry is that those are your creatives. Those are artists. To be able to be your most creative self, if you’re in this state of chronic stress, well, we’re not unleashing your creativity. We’re not doing the very best work that we can do for our clients in that state. It’s been really awesome to see the transformation they took to the peak performance strategies we taught very quickly, because they experienced immediately how they felt differently.
Then we did it with the leadership team first, and then we took the work to the rest of their staff. In a very short amount of time, they’re like, “This is a different place to work. This is not the place that I started at a year ago or two years ago.” They’ve built a pipeline of leaders internally in their company. They’ve done between four and six internal promotions.
Scrappy:
Nice.
Dr. Carrie LaDue:
They’re able to retain their talent, which is really hard for people right now. They’re able to attract new talent, because their current staff are like, “This place is wonderful to work. They really freaking care about us.” We took them from a 55, 60 hour on average work week down to 35 hours.
Scrappy:
That’s amazing.
Dr. Carrie LaDue:
Who doesn’t want to work in a company that says, “Hey, guess what? We’re going to force you all to work a whole lot less these days.”
Scrappy:
Carrie, what advice would you give to your 12 year old self?
Dr. Carrie LaDue:
Don’t take life so seriously. Lighten up, have a little more fun.
Scrappy:
No more migraines.
Dr. Carrie LaDue:
No more freaking migraines.
Scrappy:
I’d like you to plug your business. I think you’re fascinating as a person, and your company is very, very intriguing. Can you tell us more about it in terms of where we can reach you and how to get involved with your company?
Dr. Carrie LaDue:
Yeah. Yeah, go to Limitlessbusiness.com, just like it should be spelled. We can connect there. You can also find me on LinkedIn, Dr. Carrie LaDue. The way I like to start is just building a relationship. Let’s be friends first. Let me find out what are you into, are our values are aligned? What kind of challenges are you having? Maybe I can help, maybe I can’t. If I can’t, I’ll send you to somebody who can.
Scrappy:
Most of the consultants I know are hardcore. They’re super analytical, and they’re A to Z. You’re special, Carrie, and I really appreciate taking the time to talk to you.
Dr. Carrie LaDue:
Oh, thank you so much. I appreciate that.
Scrappy:
Yeah. Yeah. We’re sponsored with Content with Teeth, a creative content agency with 20 years of experience right here in southwest Florida. As you can see with our fat head, we do things really big. We’re specializing in copywriting, video production, content. If you’d like to sponsor the Come Up, our show here, or be a guest, hit me up at HeyScrappy on IG, or text Mike at 21,000. Once again, Limitless Business. Carrie, you’re awesome. Let’s stay in touch.
Dr. Carrie LaDue:
Thanks so much.
