“Betting on You” and supporting your employees

“Betting on You” and supporting your employees with Laurie Ruettimann 

Career advice from a top career success thought leader 

I've got a wonderful guest for you. Laurie Ruettimann is a former human resources leader turned writer, entrepreneur, and speaker. CNN recognized her as one of the top five career advisers in the United States. Her work has been featured on NPR, The New Yorker, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and Vox. She frequently delivers keynote speeches at businesses and management events around the world, now, mostly virtually, and hosts a popular podcast focused on fixing work. She lives with her husband and cats in Raleigh, North Carolina. Laurie has been heavily involved in HR. Her book Betting On You: How to Put Yourself First and (Finally) Take Control of Your Career was published by Henry Holt and Company in January 2021. I'm excited to have Laurie on the show. Laurie, welcome.  

Thanks for having me. I'm stoked to be here and it's been a long time coming. I'm a fan.  

We were connected by a mutual friend a while back. I've listened to your podcast, Punk Rock HR, and I know we've chatted. We followed each other on social media. We've talked about doing these interviews for some time. It's awesome to make this happen, and also cool because we published books around the same time. Mine came out about two months before yours, on a very similar subject. I know we're aligned on this. I'm excited to dig in, especially to your book and how people can bet on themselves and take more ownership of their careers. You also talk about HR, L&D, and how L&D professionals can support their people in having more career success. Before we get into that, I'd love to talk a little bit about your career, how you got into all this, and how you made the transformation that I read on your bio from blaming others to owning your career.  

Don't get me wrong, I still like to blame others. That's the part of the fun of life. Every story begins in a boring way where someone is having a moment of inflection, a moment of crisis. Mine was at an airport in the Middle of America when I worked for a small pharmaceutical company called Pfizer. Have you heard of that company? Just teeny tiny, not in the news or anything. I was upset working there. I had been working in human resources for over a decade. As I got better at my job, I grew more and more unhappy. My role was to go around the world and lay people off, including my husband. I had this moment at the airport where it was weighing on my soul and ganging up on me.  

As the business traveler that I was, I was drinking a bottle of Pepsi, eating a bag of Starburst for dinner, reading as Us Weekly, totally braindead, totally checked out of my own life. I had a moment where I read a story about Courtney Love in Us Weekly Magazine. I thought, “If Courtney Love can have this amazing life, why not me?” It sent me down this path of prioritizing my career, putting myself first, focusing on continuous learning, and learning how to take a risk. All four elements are wrapped up in individual accountability. Self-leadership forms the foundation of my book. That's my origin story. Once I realized that I had to take accountability for my life, there was no going back to that world in human resources, not for me.  

When you say putting yourself first and taking accountability in your life, tell me more. What does that mean to you?  

Working for Pfizer, one of the things I quickly recognized is they always had money. They had money to take people out to dinner. They had money to make sure the executives earn 237 times more than the average worker. They had the money for corporate jets and the helicopter. I saw all of this ostentatious wealth and I was a part of it. I earned a great living. I had a bonus and they paid for my cell phone even though I was traveling around and firing people. That cognitive dissonance made me reflect on my life. How was I spending my time? How was I allocating my own individual resources when I felt like I couldn't quit? Was that true? I started to question the stories I was telling myself. Once I realized that I could run my life like a business and I was the CEO of my life, I couldn't go back to taking orders from a dude who went to Pepperdine and thought he was the boss of me.  

It does make a big difference. I talk about this all the time too. Many people are drifting through their careers, waiting for someone to tell them what to do. That's pretty normal versus taking the initiative, taking ownership, taking responsibility for everything. That also means that if you're unhappy with your situation, that's on you. It's on you to make a change. You made that change.  

[bctt tweet="We're in the golden age of learning. There is no excuse not to be curious and follow that curiosity. " via="no"]

For sure. It's not like I had this epiphany at an airport and walked into the CEO's office and said, “Jeff Kindler, CEO at the time, take this job and shove it.” Instead, I started to work on a plan and the foundation of the plan was my individual wellbeing. I gained a ton of weight while working at Pfizer. I wasn't eating right. I was eating dinner at the airport and grabbing whatever was available at Hudson's. It’s doubling down on my wellbeing, which meant sleeping better, exercising, telling people no, setting boundaries. I also got my butt into therapy and ask some questions of myself. I looked for guidance and advice from people who knew what they were doing, and were experts in human psychology and not just taking advice from authors off the shelf.  

Even though I am now one of those authors, I wanted to go to people who had some domain expertise. Finally, I went back and found a path towards learning. That meant going back and studying, writing, and creative writing the things that I loved, and then also being curious about how to open up a business because that's ultimately what I wanted to do. Individual learning was not something that I can do overnight. Between the time I decided to leave Pfizer and the day I left, it was almost a year but it was a good year well spent and I had a paycheck.  

The golden age of learning

You're starting to make some changes. You're creating a plan. You're working that plan and you've got a paycheck along the way. I like that you’ve mentioned investing in wellbeing, working with a therapist, and knowing the difference. A lot of people are not even doing any type of learning, but there are levels to that. There's getting the book and reading it, and then there's hiring a coach, a therapist, or a nutritionist to work the plan specifically for you.  

What I discovered about learning is that we're in the golden age of learning. There's no excuse not to be curious and to follow that curiosity. Even back then, there was the internet. There was YouTube back then. There were all sorts of ways to go out and find the thing that I was curious about. Could I get a certification? Maybe, maybe not. That costs money, but I could at least get on the path towards the thing I was pursuing. A lot of people are snobby about learning. They think learning has to be this formal program, even though you and I are learning experts, this is what we do for a living. We know all learning is worthwhile for us. We say, “If it's not specifically focused on a goal, I don't care.” What I had discovered is that the act of learning anything makes me a better learner when it matters.  

It's important for me to go and pursue things. I foster dogs and that's a new thing for me. I've been studying dogs, dog behavior, dog psychology, how to treat dogs, and I'm learning so much. I know that's going to have a downstream effect in other areas of my life. This is an early weird example of what I did at Pfizer, but I was curious about something. There were a lot of things I was curious about. I put things in a hat and started to pull it out. I was like, “The history of Istanbul, I want to know more about that.” I went on the internet and learned a little bit, and it turns out since that time I've been to Istanbul twice. It came in handy, but it was just a fun thing to be curious about. All learning is worthwhile and frankly, it pivoted my attention away from my terrible job.  

A long time ago, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jeff Hoffman. One of the biggest pieces of advice he gave us is to learn something every single day. It could be something random that you're curious about like Istanbul, dog training, or whatever it is. Learn something new every day and it will continue to grow your brain, your learning capabilities. It gets you in the habit of learning all the time. Tony Robbins says, “Almost all fulfillment comes from contribution and growth.” I feel like if I'm not learning and I'm not growing, then I'm going in the opposite direction. I want to learn every day as well.  

In my book, I quote the esteemed William Burroughs, who is a crazy old junky rider and Beat poet. He felt that if you're not learning, you're not growing. If you're not growing, what's the point of life? Once you start to understand that stagnation is detrimental, it's moving backwards. It's like standing still while the world goes forward and you're missing out on all these beautiful things around you. It compels you to be a little bit curious, and that's what I saw happening in my career. Although I had some domain expertise in HR, the world was passing me by, and I couldn't spend another minute reading Us Weekly. It's always got to be over for me. Once I put down the Us Weekly, put down the Pepsi, put down the Starburst, and embraced individual accountability, I could no longer operate in a state of learned helplessness.  

There are systemic reasons why people can't do certain things. Racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, misogyny is all real, but there's also this thing called mindset. For me, I had been around enough executives and top performers who operated in a way and with a mindset where they were going to try no matter what. The only difference between them and me is that they made the effort. Did they fail? Absolutely, they failed. I wasn't privy to all of those failures, but now I know that. For whatever reason, I was taking myself out of the game before I could even play it. I felt like those days had to be over. Andy, you must have felt that at some point in your life.  

Career Success: Stagnation is moving backwards. It's like standing still while the world goes forward.

Absolutely. I've felt that for a lot of my life and my career. There was a turning point for me. I'll never forget this. I was at a mastermind retreat run by a friend of mine. I was talking about how I aspire to be a big-name speaker, someone that people recognize, and that makes a difference in a big impact in the world. I didn't feel it was attainable because I'm not those other people. I'm just a regular guy that's talking to people and being curious. This guy named Adam McCarty, who was in the room, turned to me. He had not spoken up much the entire time we were there. He was a quiet guy. He looked at me and said, “Andy, the only difference between you and them is they're doing it.” What do I say to that? “You're right.” Ever since then, I'm not going to make excuses. I'm going to follow my dreams and chase this stuff.  

People out there are talking about imposter syndrome as if it was just discovered. Also, as if it’s only the domain of women. One of the interesting things about imposter syndrome is that it's existed forever and it's gender-neutral. Everybody has imposter syndrome, even the most successful people out there like Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan. They may not admit it, but in their quiet moments, they've got it as well. For me, one of the cool things in my life that I've learned is a little technique called the premortem to test things out. Whenever I feel I'm going to fail at something, or I'm terrible, or I'm a loser, I set a timer for a minute and I write down all the ways I'm going to fail.  

This is an old stoic exercise that's used by NASA, Cisco, and IBM to figure out how you're going to fail. The premortem can be used for you. You set that timer for a minute. You write down how you're going to fail. When the timer goes up, you look at that list. It's your roadmap to tackle before you do the thing you dream about. If you're worried about being a speaker, but you don't think you have the charisma or the ability to tell a story, that may be true, and you're not an imposter. You may be failing at that right now, but you can work on that. The fact that you do this exercise before you do the thing you want to do, it gives you a 30% competitive advantage at succeeding.  

For me, that's not nothing. If you're interviewing for that dream job, write a list down. You only need a minute of the silly, funny, and also accurate ways you're going to fail at interviewing at that job. Before you interview for it, fix your stuff. This advice changed my life. I thought about writing this book for many years and I talked myself out of it for a long time. I wrote down a list of the ways I was going to fail, “I wouldn't get an agent, I couldn't get a book deal, I couldn't tell a story.” What did I do? I got a book coach who coached me on writing a proposal, and helped me through getting an agent. The agent helped me through all the negotiations in the meetings with the big five publishers, and my book went to auction. There was a bidding war for my manuscript and I got a great book advance. It was beyond my wildest dreams. The pre-mortem was essential. It's the one thing you can do if you think you're a loser or even if you think you're a winner, but you don't want to fail. It's where it's at.  

I love that exercise. The other thing it does is I find that many people let fear hold them back, and they don't even think through what it is that they fear. People fear rejection and judgment from others. You ask them questions about, what could happen? What would it look like if you failed? In your case, if it didn't work out, maybe the book didn't get published traditionally. Maybe you had to self-publish it. Maybe you still did that and nobody bought it. You could still be proud that you put a book out in the world. You wouldn't die. You wouldn't lose your friends. You wouldn't lose your family. It wouldn't be that bad, and you would learn from it and get to try it again.  

The other thing is that people are crazy about post-mortem. They love it. Let's look back and assign blame and figure out how it went wrong. When it comes time to start a new project, they're like these relentless optimists. They forget what happened last time they went through an enrollment, they launched a website, and they wanted to open a consultancy. They don't learn the mistakes of the past. It's very difficult to get people who are excited to sit down in a team and talk about potential failure. They may feel like Debbie Downers or Don Downers. They may feel like you're negative. They may think that might interrupt the momentum. If you can do that and then do a Venn diagram of all the potential failures that the room sees, and then look for outliers and blind spots, you give your team and your project a competitive advantage. I had to put the premortem in the book because the premortem is the thing that has helped me since the day I decided to leave Pfizer.  

Before we move on, I do have to ask you one more question going back to your Pfizer days because you were already in a unique position. You were going around laying people off, which has to be tough on you mentally as they're going through the experience. You mentioned laying off your husband. Can you talk about that?  

I put it in my book. It's weird because I worked in Human Resources and my husband worked in the manufacturing and R&D division. We didn't have anything in common at work and it was perfect. I call it to wind because HR can't keep a secret that the whole entire R&D department globally was going to be reconfigured, and there were going to be massive layoffs. They were sheltering me from this information because they didn't want me to tell my husband because he was a senior-level individual, but nobody can keep a secret in HR. That's the thing. I heard about it. I came home and told my husband, “You know that big meeting, that town hall that's coming up? You're going to lose your job.” He said to me, “What do you know? You just work in HR.”  

[bctt tweet="Having a department that is for all people and yet for the organization at the same time is disingenuous. That’s what HR is, essentially. " via="no"]

We've been married almost twenty years, so the story ends happily. It was a rough night because I'm like, “What do you mean what do I know?” Right there and then, he told me everything I needed to know about what people who even love me thought of my job. More importantly, when they gave him the news that broke us because we were a two-income family with one company between us, and I didn't much care for my job. I thought, “Now it's my responsibility for health insurance, to make sure that we've got some income coming in, to make sure that we're safe, all the good stuff, and I don't even like this job.” At the time, I was trying for a family. It was super stressful. That was not a high point in our life, but luckily my husband came back and said, “I'm so sorry. I should have listened to you.” For all of you out there who are married, don't be like my husband. Be receptive even when it's negative, but I understand it because when someone tells you that you're going to lose your job, that is a nightmare scenario for most individuals. I get it.  

Hard truths about HR and L&D

People don't want to hear that news. I'm going to go to what you said, the quote about HR. We both have a lot of followers who work in HR. They may be either hear that, “What do you know? You just work in HR,” or they imagine that other people are thinking it and saying it. Why do you think that is still the perspective of HR, and what can we do about it?  

Human resources is a dual-use function. Dual-use in technology means that it has good applications and bad applications. HR is one of those dual-use departments that could be used for good to move the organization forward. Its purview, for the most part, is to make sure that the organization is indemnified against lawsuits. That's its number one function. From there, there's a lot of theory out there that if you're doing the work for employees, you're going to indemnify yourself against litigation automatically. We know that's not true. People sue for all kinds of reasons. We think if we invest in a learning and development program, if we've got a great wellness and wellbeing program, happy employees are going to be more productive, and it’s not. Someone's going to come to work with all their drama, all their heartache, and it's going to spill over, and something's going to happen. You need that regulatory and compliance function to clean it up.  

I don't know how you get over having a department that is for all people and yet for the organization at the same time. Intellectually, it's dishonest and disingenuous. There have been attempts to break it apart, to defund it, to move recruiting to marketing, sales, and L&D over to operations. At the end of the day, you have a bunch of leaders who just like a business and don't like people. Until you get to the core of that tension, there's always going to be tension in this big compromise we call HR. What do you think?  

I agree. Things have changed a lot for HR and organizations. I know coming from the history of HR that it was more about how do we keep people online? How do we deal with regulations? How do we avoid lawsuits? For those in HR who want to be more successful, they want a seat at the table, they've got to find ways to become more strategic and think more progressively, how do I help the organization achieve strategic goals versus just put out fires and avoid a lawsuit? 

There is always going to be the core of human resources that's responsible for compliance and employment lawsuit mitigation. Until you give that to maybe a compliance department or back to the legal department, and you have HR only focused on human performance and potential, you're never going to get around that tension. I sympathize with my friends and colleagues in human resources. When I say HR, I'm thinking like a CEO because your CEO is not like, “There's a difference between recruiting, people performance, employer branding.” They just call it HR. They still all to this day call it HR. If that's what it is, and we believe it can be something different, we need to make the case for change and so far, we've not been very successful.  

I want to shift back to talking about how people can accelerate in their careers. Before we get there, one more question about HR and L&D. When we think about careers, and I think you and I are aligned on this, but maybe you can tell me if I'm wrong, there's a responsibility on both sides. Individuals have a responsibility to take ownership of their career. They're expecting some type of support from HR, L&D, from their organization. How can HR professionals, Learning and Development professionals best support their people? What are they getting wrong that's not supporting them?  

That's a loaded question because more and more of the workforce are becoming independent workers, contractors, and consultants. This premise that workers are responsible for their development and need support from their employer is applying to a smaller and smaller segment of our workforce. Theoretically, if you're going to employ someone, you're not only responsible for who they are now and making sure they can do their jobs safely, effectively, but also growing them in that field or beyond moving forward. I would like to say that the best L&D leaders that I've ever met don't feel it's their singular purpose to own the learning function. They are partners and collaborators with people managers, and put the onus on leaders to drive, to set the tone, to set the agenda. The L&D function could advise on best practices. They can bring the best technology forth. They can talk about a strategy, but it's not theirs to own and they know it.  

Career Success: Human resources is a dual-use function. It has good applications and bad applications.

There's something beautiful about that, about being professionally detached, confident and mature enough to say, “I know what works. I know what leading-edge companies are doing out there. Here are my recommendations, but it's up to you, CFOs, CEO, leader extraordinary in the field to implement this.” The concept of professional detachment, which is something I write about all the time, is super important because you are not your job. You, especially in learning and development, are not necessarily responsible for the outcome of what you recommend. It's a bit of a mind game to play, but that distance is the healthiest way to do it. That's what I think. What do you think about that, Andy?  

I agree. The job of Learning and Development, talent development, is different in every organization, but provide those development opportunities to people, which people want and expect when they go into organizations. It enables those people leaders to be able to have more of those career conversations, those coaching conversations, which as we know is the most critical aspect of helping people with their career success. It’s getting that coaching and support from their managers, which a lot of people are not getting.  

It reminds me of so many things in my own life where someone would hand me a map and I wasn't ready. A lot of L&D professionals or a lot of HR professionals in general feel that way. You're giving your organization the map to success. You're giving them everything they need to be enabled, to be innovative, to disrupt the marketplace. There's something about individual accountability within the people management function, within individual leaders that have to prioritize it. Many leaders out in the field are like, “I don't want to do it. I don't want to get my hands dirty with the people who report to me.” That is so frustrating. I see tons of L&D leaders taking that on, taking it personally, feeling like there's more that they can do, “Can I be more strategic? Can I make the case a different way?” Sometimes you can't and you got to be okay with that, knowing that the organization is not ready to go where you believe it can go. That's a hard thing to know, and to come to work every day, and to take that paycheck. It's more common than we talk about.  

Let's get back to the individual and how people can become more successful in their own careers. Why is it that when you look at some certain people, some people seem to be so successful? They're moving from promotion to promotion, and others seem so stuck like they can't figure it out. We talked a little bit about this with our conversation about imposter syndrome, but why is that happening?  

If I were a PhD psychologist, I would have a completely different career. I thought about going back to school to do that because I'm so curious about human behavior. There are a lot of different vectors in those conversation. There are generational wealth and messages that families have around learning and possibilities. If you come from a very successful family, there are expectations about how you will perform in life. Your zip code determines a lot. There are these people who, given everything, would prefer to be stuck. I know this because I worked in human resources, doing employee relations for all those years. It's like, “You've got all kinds of advantages and your peers are up performing you. What's your problem?” They're mired in their own drama. They're mired in what's going on.  

Back in the day, I would want to give them a fifteen-point plan. You need to do this. You need to do that, but now I recognize it's all about the small wins. You practice in the small moments to nail it in the big moments when it counts. If someone has attendance problems, they're disengaged from work, there are big things that you could prescribe for them to do. You can threaten them, but you can also come back with these small things, these small gains. Andy, you and I are both athletes. We know this. Nobody ever ran a marathon on day one. I'm back in marathon training for the Chicago Marathon, and I'm just doing baby sprints now. There is no way I could run a marathon anytime soon, but the little individual things matter.  

As a leader, as a coach, as a people manager even now, when people come to me and talk about some of their big systemic challenges, we break it apart. I also want to throw one other thing out. Show me someone who's a top performer, and that person is an amazing time management guru. Chaos starts in the Outlook calendar. If anybody wants to tackle anything big in their lives, they want to work on their marriage, improve their jobs, get promoted, write a book, go back to school, start in your Outlook calendar. I talked a little bit about that in my book. I do some coaching around that when people come to me, but if you're not building in core time for wellbeing and learning your actual work, you're not time blocking, you're not building in time for rest, you're never going to do anything great in this world.  

Putting yourself first

I agree with you completely. I'm big on that. The subtitle of your book is, How to Put Yourself First and (Finally) Take Control of Your Career. What does it mean to put yourself first and why don't more people do it? I know we're getting stuff thrown at us all the time. We're often responding to emails, texts, social media, our requests from our manager and our team. Why don't more people put themselves first?  

[bctt tweet="Do whatever it is that gives you energy and restores your soul so that you can work at the intersection of purpose and meaning. " via="no"]

Especially in the age of COVID-19, it's so hard to say no. There are fears about what will happen if you’re not productive. There are fears about what will happen if you're not present. Presenteeism is a thing that many of us are facing. There are also increasing demands from people we love. We're home all the time and we want to be present for a family. We want to be present for our friends and our jobs. It's very difficult carve out time, but you are no good to anybody unless you're good to yourself. In the book, I talk a lot about that. A lot of individuals in the professional workforce are constantly being pinged all day long with emergencies or things that are urgent. Good communication skills are super important. Do you have a common understanding in your team around the definition of emergency?  

I've coached many men and women who before COVID-19 were taking calls at 7:00, 8:00, 9:00 at night, all they did was handle problems. That's what adult work is, problem-solving, but it's also having time off of work. The question for me is always, what is an emergency? One person's emergency is another person's dumb anxiety attack. It doesn't have any factual basis. Getting some common language around emergency. Meeting with your team and understanding the rules of engagement around time is also an important conversation to have. You can be honest, especially now when things are so weird and say, “I'm burnt out and I need to do things better.” Can we talk about time-blocking? Can we talk about shared calendars? Can we talk about the things we need to do in order to focus back on our own wellbeing?  

The final thing you can do is practice this concept I just talked about, which is professional detachment. Treat your job like a client. Would you let a client boss you around? Would you let a client do the things you were doing? No. You would fire that client. The good thing about having a job in Corporate America is that it's very difficult to get fired. If you're working 80 hours a week, try working 76, what are they going to do? Fire you? No way. Try working 72, try working 32 hours a week, and see if anybody notices the difference. In fact, I would take a slacker who worked 30 hours a week, and got their job done versus someone who was always telling me how committed they are and working 80 hours a week. I want the slacker. Give me the person who works efficiently, gets it done, then goes and does other thing. That's the person I want on my team. That's how I feel.  

That person in some ways, is putting themselves first. What I'm hearing from you is so many people are overworked. They're burnt out because they're responding to things all the time. They can't shut things off, especially during this pandemic where we're all working virtually. The computers right there, and the work is coming all the time around the clock. We need to be willing to invest in ourselves and our wellbeing. The key to that, what I'm hearing from you is setting boundaries. It’s being willing to say, “I'm not going to take these late-night meetings and I am going to restrict the hours I work that I'm going to be more efficient. I'm going to make sure that I spend some time on me, taking a walk, doing yoga, taking a breath, talking to friends, whatever it may be.” A lot of people need to make that change.  

Embedded in setting boundaries is this thing we keep going back to, which is a mindset that you're worth it, and that you have control and you can do it. You don't have to tell your boss that you can never work on a Friday. I'm not saying you're going to go in and say, “I'm done. I'm not working Fridays,” but you can take the PTO that's been allocated to you. How about taking it and not spending that time with your children? Taking a couple of hours and doing something for you. You are allowed to do that. That is within your capacity. If you are reading this, you have time to do something for yourself. Maybe this show is that thing for you. Do more of it. Do whatever it is that gives you energy and restores your soul so that you can go back to work, and work at the intersection of purpose and meaning. That's what this is all about.  

Laurie, we've got to wrap things up here. The book again is called Betting On You: How to Put Yourself First and (Finally) Take Control of Your Career. We talked about setting those boundaries. We talked about the importance of small wins and what it means to put yourself first, and how to get out of reaction mode. For people who are reading, nodding their heads, thinking, “Yes, I've got to get out of this reaction mode, set more boundaries. Start to put myself first in my career,” what's one more tip or thing that people can do to bet on themselves and put themselves ahead of all this other noise that's going on? 

I would like to leave everybody with the reminder that you can do your premortem and test your fears and anxieties. Check those stories that you tell yourself to see if they're true or not. If they are true, if you're the loser you think you are, good for you for figuring it out before you went out there and did that thing you're scared of. Go fix it.  

Betting on You: How to Put Yourself First and (Finally) Take Control of Your Career

Laurie, for anybody reading that wants to get the book, get in touch with you, where's the best place for them to go?  

They can go to PunkRockHr.com and fall into this ecosystem that I've created and apologies in advance. You're going to see a lot of cats and dogs. I hope that's okay.  

Follow Laurie on Instagram if you want to see more cats and dogs on a regular basis, as I do. Last question, Laurie. I ask all my guests this, and this is going to be a softball for you. My book is called Own Your Career Own Your Life. When you hear that, what does it mean to you for someone to own their career?  

It means that they take individual accountability, good and bad. They own their career journey, their story, and they don't apologize for it. Give me someone who doesn't apologize for their journey, and I'm looking at a future CEO. That person impresses the hell out of me. That's what own your career and own your life means to me.  

I love it. Laurie, thank you so much for coming on the book again, it's called Betting On You: How to Put Yourself First and (Finally) Take Control of Your Career. I'm excited about this book and everything that you are doing, Laurie. I'm looking forward to keeping our conversation going and talking more soon. Thanks again for coming to the show.  

I appreciate you. 

• Betting On You: How to Put Yourself First and (Finally) Take Control of Your Career 
• Punk Rock HR 
• PunkRockHr.com 
• Instagram - Laurie Ruettimann 
• Own Your Career Own Your Life