Today, we have Laura Steward on the show. She's going to be talking about her journey and her story is really amazing!
Laura is a sought after Business Strategist, Keynote Speaker, Radio Host and Author. She started Wisdom Learned LLC, a company which is dedicated to educating leaders, based on experience and wisdom, after first building and then selling her highly successful Technology Services Company, which she started after being offered a package to leave her corporate job with a Fortune 100 Company.
Laura has tons of certifications, as well as a Computer Science Degree, a Technical Writing Degree and a Masters Degree.
Laura is the author of a Novice Award winning, number one International Best Selling book, called What Would A Wise Woman Do? - Questions To Ask Along The Way, which was on the Amazon Woman In Business Best Seller List for over ninety straight weeks at launch and continues to hit best seller lists across the world.
Through her weekly broadcast radio show, It's All About The Questions and her keynote speeches, books, seminars, training and one-on-one sessions, Laura's mission is crystal clear- it's to help people get off auto-pilot and create amazing, successful lives.
Show highlights:
- Laura had zero limiting beliefs about selling, when she first started her Tech Services Company. She brought in six figures within the first year and never looked back from there.
- After she sold her company, however, she had massive limiting beliefs. She had let all her employees go, as things weren't working out and she found herself in a void, not knowing where she was headed. She then realized that she actually had so much business booked, that she had to pick herself up. So she made some calls and got a really fantastic response from many people, all willing to help her to service her clients! So, her business took off again and from that point on, her income doubled!
- That really gave her a chance to rethink how she was doing business. This was when she decided to sell.
- She was offered way less than she thought the company to be worth and she then realized that this was because she no longer had any recurring revenues, or contracts.
- When she restarted her business from the ground up again, it transformed the business, the values and the revenues to the company. She eventually sold the company after fifteen years and many different partners.
- When Laura started a new company, however, she thought that she lacked the technical degrees, to allow her to consult and work with other companies to grow their businesses. This really was not true- it was just a massive limiting belief- and this prevented her from generating any revenue at all. Even her highly successful book did not turn this belief around for her. It took a number of years for her to fully integrate that she had actually run a highly successful business, with a seven figure revenue. That, her Masters Degree and her lessons learned from the school of hard knocks, finally became clear to her. She realized that her number one limiting belief was due to Imposter Syndrome.
- Laura realized that she had been consulting with CEO's of Fortune 10 Companies, being the Technical Support for corporations, when she ran her Tech Company. What set her company apart from the average Tech Company, was that they were business focused, so she would design technology around the goals and aspirations of the businesses that she was working with, so she had to work around business blocks that these businesses were having and this helped to realize the skills that she really had. This broke her limiting beliefs and clients suddenly started coming on board.
- Laura has been caring for her mom, who suffers from Dementia and Heart Failure, for the past five years- and she got divorced during this time too. She started looking around, at what she loved and how she could best help others, after all that she's been through emotionally and with her business and this, together with the true friends that she has, started a positive shift within her.
- A friend suggested that Laura would make a great Radio Show Host. She tried it and loved it! Her own Radio Show was a big turning point for her- with that, she could make a difference by being herself!
- Laura has learned to trust herself, over the years. She's also learned that she needs to define what both success and failure mean for her. She's had to ask herself 'why' and work out whether her limiting beliefs are actually her own, or whether they possibly come from someone else, or from the 'collective of the world'.
- Cleaning house, both internally and with the people that Laura surrounds herself with, and serving people to the level that they want to keep coming back (recurring revenue), are the two strategies that have really helped her to double her sales.
- The biggest thing that Laura teaches her clients, is how to look at their why- in other words, to question their own motivation for doing what they do. She uses an exercise that she calls 'The Five Why's'. She also helps her clients to look outside of their picture frame.
Laura's book, What Would A Wise Woman Do? Questions To Ask Along The Way, is available from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or from Independent Book Stores.
Laura is offering you, the listener, a free 15 minute Consultation with her. Reach out to her at laura@laurasteward.com, or go to her special page on her website at www.laurasteward.com/ursula. You can also get some other free resources there, including a download with questions to help you to get outside the frame and look back in.
