155 Work You Love So You Love To Work: Entrepreneur Brooke Erol is Changing the Culture of Work

Brooke Erol is on a mission to humanize the workplace – by helping people align with their authentic purpose and passion. CEO and founder of Purposeful Business and a Author of Create a Life You Love, Brooke shares how she helps leaders create fun and purposeful environments so everyone – team members, clients, vendors, suppliers and shareholders – are more fulfilled, happy and productive.

Melinda Wittstock:         Brooke, welcome to Wings.

Brooke Erol:                      Hi, Melinda. It’s good to be here. Thank you.

Melinda Wittstock:         I’m excited to have you on. I want to start of course by going back in time a little bit. You took a big leap way back 2003 where you quit your job, your country. You made a big transition. That takes a lot of guts, a lot of bravery. What was it that made you take the leap?

Brooke Erol:                      Yes. Thank you for asking that because I know a lot of people go through the same things so I would love to share my story. First of all, I did follow the formula given to me from my family, “Okay, get good grades. Go to a good school, even the best schools if possible. Then have a great job for 30 years to come and be happy.” I did follow the formula. It really went up to a certain point and I joined the IBM, a big company.

Everybody was like looking to me saying, “You achieved it all,” but inside of me probably as to my fourth, fifth year I felt like I’m not so fulfilled. I did everything right but it doesn’t feel so wonderful and I started asking those big questions to myself. At the time unfortunately there wasn’t any conversation around these topics. You would be just the weirdest one to ask this out loud. I had to do it for myself.

I was asking I did everything like as I was expected to do. I’m here at this great company making really good money but I don’t feel great so what do I want to do with my life? What is really my purpose working here? I did find a purpose there but when I ask a question like maybe selling the best technology to my clients, so they serve their clients in the best way, a wonderful purpose for some but I knew that wasn’t the real and a good one for me.

I started asking those big questions. I had no idea really what to do but the only thing I really, really knew what to do was to quit my job because it started affecting my health. Because I was really conflicting with myself and now when I go back, the most, biggest conflict was really my values. I wasn’t aligned with my values in that job. I quit without finding something and that’s not what I would probably recommend to anybody because I didn’t have a big savings waiting for me either.

Somehow it ties with United States at the time. I was born in Istanbul Turkey, so that’s where I had my IBM job. I always wanted to come to United States of course legally and do have a new life here so after I quit my job, I even left my country. If you ask me like if you want a logical answer why I did that, I don’t have a great answer. I just felt like I had to do it and I got this green card so I came here with my husband who’s also crazy like me and our little four year old son.

I started to still continue to ask those questions to myself and I still had to work professionally until I make a living. I worked with a coach which really got my awareness level to a place where I could see what’s keeping me from finding my purpose, what keeps me from following my dreams and I started coaching. That’s when it was in 2003 that I did that then I start to talk with people exactly like myself who had great jobs maybe or who were in transition but didn’t know how to take the steps to really do what they love to do in their lives because I feel it’s so important.

Melinda Wittstock:         I think, Brooke, what’s so interesting about your story and there are many things that I want to explore but that the business you’re doing now is solving the need that you had then. Isn’t it interesting that we as entrepreneurs really create businesses around solving problems that we know intimately? In a way, that having the problem is almost a good thing because it showed us the path that we could help other people.

Brooke Erol:                      True and I have so many entrepreneur fans around me the same way. My, even husband being one of them, it’s so true. We go through something that feels really bad but something really good comes out of it like a silver lining. I think my own story helps me through like just so many people like me and there are so many really especially nowadays, so it’s so true.

Melinda Wittstock:         It’s interesting because in the mindset of the entrepreneur, you begin to recognize that overtime. You start to see that as a pattern. When you are conscious enough in those bad times because they do happen, you can recognize that, “This is interesting. I’m going through some growth right now. This is going to be good. I’m going to understand this in a moment or in a week or maybe a year but I’m going to understand that there’s a reason.”

Brooke Erol:                      Exactly, exactly, so true. Yup.

Melinda Wittstock:         Because it’s such an up and down, isn’t it, the roller coaster? Hasn’t been a real roller coaster for you?

[tweet_box design=”default” float=”none”]Having a child of your own is one of the biggest growth experiences you have because they teach you so much. The second big one is really to be an entrepreneur. #WINGSPodcast #WINGSofInspiredBusiness @BoErol1[/tweet_box]

Brooke Erol:                      My god, of course. Of course, yeah, definitely. I don’t know if I was expecting this much but it certainly is. I feel like it’s like having a child of your own is one of the biggest growth experiences you have because they teach you so much. The second big one is really to be an entrepreneur. You see all your weaknesses, there’s so many things that comes up. You find out something about yourself, you work that out then another one comes along the way. It’s a constants like growth experience for sure.

Yeah, I think entrepreneurship is better than hiring a therapist.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, I would agree with that. It really is because you face so many things that you didn’t even know about yourself, so true.

Brooke Erol:                      Exactly. As you faced those things, how did you deal with them? Has it gotten easier overtime?

Brooke Erol:                      Yes and … I’m really lucky that I’m like somebody who wants to learn new stuff and understand human behavior and human psychology. As I did more of that, I understood myself better, and working with really good mentors and coaches really helped me because it’s so much easier to see what other people’s blind spots are but you don’t see it in yourself.

Brooke Erol :                     I think before you get any awareness so what your limiting believes are, what your obstacles are, you can’t really solve them. You feel like everything’s normal but you’re the one who has challenges. When your self-awareness increases, I think it’s easier to deal with them.

Melinda Wittstock:         There’s a great quote from I believe it’s Dr. Hew Len who teaches the ancient Hawaiian practice of Ho’oponopono which is really just letting go of all this kind of beliefs that we have but he said something funny that always stayed with me which is, “Have you noticed that whenever there’s a problem in your life, you’re there?”

Brooke Erol:                      Me too. Me too, yes. Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:         It’s a funny way of saying we architect our own problems and sometimes completely, actually most often completely unwittingly we have limiting belief or something that we have learned.

Brooke Erol:                      Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:         Goodness, it comes from our parents or our culture or maybe even TV shows we watched when we were five.

Brooke Erol:                      Sure. It’s so true.

Melinda Wittstock:         Right? Then these things play out like almost like movies and so the more conscious we get, the more we can take those moments when we get triggered, we feel sad or angry or anxious or that we’re in a bad situation and we can just figure out how to let that go.

Brooke Erol:                      Exactly. Exactly, definitely, yeah and you see it when you become an entrepreneur for sure.

Melinda Wittstock:         Tell me, what was the first, the biggest challenge because you quit everything? Okay, so you walked away from IBM, you and you don’t know what you’re going to do next, right? At first, you didn’t know. As you began to get a clear picture of what it is you were going to do, what were some of the biggest challenges that you faced or things that you wish you’d known back then?

Brooke Erol:                      Yeah, I know.

Melinda Wittstock:         That you could pass along now to women or men who find themselves in much the same situation.

Brooke Erol:                      Sure. Of course there’s so many but some of the things that I can think of is one, I wish I had really good mentors like good entrepreneurs who went through the same steps that I had to go through so that they can really keep me into a place where I don’t do a lot of self-doubt. Because you like when things do not go according to plan, you immediately go back to yourself and try to start to judge yourself. You have self-doubt, maybe I’m not cut for this, maybe those people are smarter than me, they’re may be in a better circumstance than me, or they have more money to start their business.

You have so many things that you question about yourself. If I had a mentor right from the start, it will then make a big difference because those people go through the same steps and that’s what I try to do for others right now because I know how hard it is. I also feel like it’s better to start with capital, you still need to have … We will have a lot of expenses even if they are small, it looks small at the beginning, you have to do your marketing. You’ll have to find your leads.

You have to go and network. You have to train yourself. All of that takes some money too. Don’t assume that if you’re going just sell a service, you don’t need some capital to start your business with. If you’re still working, maybe put some money aside and like to have a day job or a part-time job while you maybe start your own business. Of course there’s many scroll of thoughts in this too. Some people believe that you have to jump with all your feet to start it but then you have to be very conscious of your finances because you don’t have the stability of salary coming in every month or every two weeks.

That’s not an easy place to be because your bills are still coming and you still have to pay them. Those were some of the challenges I would say and then to really find your real target markets, you don’t want to sell to everyone. You want to find out what those people are seeking, what are their main obstacles, what are their challenges, where are they so that you can get a hold of them and be in front of them.

[tweet_box design=”default” float=”none”]Really clarifying your target market as much as you can is a great point to start because that’s where everything else starts. #WINGSofInspiredBusiness #WomeninBusiness @BoErol1[/tweet_box]

Really clarifying your target market as much as you can is a great point to start because that’s where everything else starts where you will promote, where the price is going to be like if you want to sell or like be on social media. If your target market is not then maybe you don’t want to be there, there’s so many things that starts with your target market. To have help with that or to really dig into that is a big important phase I would stay that I had struggled with too.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah, that’s great advice. Let’s just break this down a little bit, I mean one of the ones that I think is so interesting is this propensity to want to serve everybody. It’s like when you try and please everybody, you end up pleasing none.

Brooke Erol:                      Exactly.

Melinda Wittstock:         Think about that for a moment in your, just your daily life like if you try and make everybody happy, they … Right? What’s left for you? Actually really knowing and getting to know your customers, studying them like an anthropologist might really figuring out what it is that they really need, what problem are you solving. I think sometimes women in business and I think this is true of men too, we take too long to really ask our customers or potential customers what they think.

Brooke Erol:                      Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:         We take too long perfecting a product or service before getting the input of our customers. Our customers are going to make us better.

Brooke Erol:                      Of course. Of course and that’s such a good point and it should be so obvious but we don’t do it. Ninety percent of the time I hear it and I read about this, and I had to go through this myself too. We just assume our product, our service is so wonderful we start to talk about that and we don’t even know if the customers that we’re targeting, all the prospects we’re targeting even need that or the message that we’d put out there has nothing to do with what they’re seeking. That is such a great point. I agree with you a 100%.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yeah. It’s interesting that someone that was in my Wings of Success Summit gave a wonderful quote, “I brought together 55 women all with seven, eight, and nine figure businesses all doing lessons on mindset and mojo and money.” It’s really exciting. It’s amazing. It’s like a whole entrepreneurial MBA that I wish that I was a part of that.

Brooke Erol:                      Yes, I know.

Melinda Wittstock:         I like that that I had to go solve but she said something really interesting. It was Vanessa Roberts and she said, “Fall in love with the problem, not your solution.”

Brooke Erol:                      Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:         If we think about that for a little bit if you fall in love with the problem, there’s other people who have that problem and then you automatically set up a collaborative system where you’re all working together to solve that problem. Then your customers, you’re not like taking from your customers. You’re not putting something on them. They’re on a journey with you. As soon as you made that little switch in your mind, so fall in love with the problem, not your solution because your solution has to adapt and change. If you get too attached to it … I’ve seen a lot of businesses just go off too deep in that way.

Brooke Erol:                      Sure and like I have my own exact example too. I love the saying, why don’t I note that down, “Fall in love with the problem”? For example, I really believe in purpose for individuals, professionals but also for organizations but nobody, nobody is seeking anyone to find their purpose especially in the corporate world, right? Nobody’s like, “Let me find a consultant,” and they could happily find my purpose, no way.

The only reason that I look for somebody like me is because the engagement rates are horrible because their turn over is high and purpose is only one of the solutions to get there. If I put all my messages about purpose, purpose, nobody will care, right? I had to learn that with myself too. It sounds wonderful to me, it’s heartwarming, it’s spiritual, it’s so much about life but they are not looking for somebody like that.

I had to learn that myself too that it is what their problem is that I am trying to be with them. I’m coming from a place of serving, so I’m not selling anything to them. I have a note to myself in front of me. I have incredible outperform my heart. It’s so true because I believe it has to change. The workplace could be better. There are amazing examples but if I say my message coming from only purpose, nobody will care. What you said really resonated with me, so yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:         It’s interesting, isn’t it? I’m curious what you think about how corporations are changing in terms of management style and culture because you have these startups that recognize that they can do much better like a much better bottom line results and can grow much faster if first of all they attract 18 players like really great people. If they get those people in the right seats where they are aligned with their purpose, they’re going to be more productive.

Brooke Erol:                      Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:         If you create a great workplace culture, they’re going to hang on, you’re going to have better employee retention rates and ultimately that’s going to be less expensive for you, you’re going to grow more and it’s going to cost less which is all great. That’s all bottom line stuff which is awesome. They seem to recognize and on the other hand though, we have these corporations that have been around for a long time.

Melinda Wittstock:         They’re used to that command and control type culture. They are big companies. They take a really long time to change, what’s your view of that? If those companies don’t change and evolve into better cultures, will those companies even survive?

Brooke Erol:                      Yeah. Maybe the fast quick answer is I don’t think they will because what the biggest, biggest push to make this change is coming from the new generation. Those are the things that I researched and read. The already, the biggest workforce is made up of millenials. They’re already taking the biggest pie. Then in by 2025, they’re going to be the 75%. When you look at the way they want to work, the values that they have, they are much more conscious because they have so much in their fingertips.

They know a lot more stuff than the time when I started working. What they care about is they want to work and also buy from companies who have a good stand, who have a purpose, who really treats their people right, they care about how the company really contributes to the environmental, the climates change and everything so they want to really work for and also buy from companies who have a good stand and to do good in the world.

If this is what they want and they are not going to tolerate the command control or working from nine to six, or all these criteria that people used to care about, they are bringing the disruption on their own. I am talking to big companies like IBM, I’m talking to small ones. The biggest difference between is the big one’s had this mindset just like you said for so many years that it’s very hard for them to change their bureaucracy, their layers and layers and layers of management that they believe it belongs to the corporate world.

It’s very, very hard for them to change and that’s the biggest challenge. I do talk when I go and talk to them about the future of work and purpose and everything, they totally get that but they can’t even implement it because either they’re in the midst level management and they have fresh air from the top, they still are forced by the quarterly numbers that they have to make.

My point is even the biggest financial company in the world like Blackrock, the CEO even went out there and told all the people who work with him … Not only his employees but all the companies that they’re selling the stocks off said, “Okay, you have to be more purposeful.” You can’t go on doing only quarterly goals and you can’t go on only thinking about your stockholders. It has to be all the stakeholders.

That includes their people, the clients, the vendors, the partners, the community, everything. Even the biggest financial company CEO is making a statement like this. I know I’m answering this in the longest way possible but there’s so much into that question that I believe that the big companies if they keep on going on like this, I don’t believe personally that they’re going to survive for too long.

It’s not going to happen in the short term but in the long term, none of the people that I know who are millenials are going and applying to these companies. These small entrepreneurships startups just like you said are attracting the A, talent. They’re paying them well. They’re giving them the flexibility that they want so they have everything there. Why should they go and work?

I have a millennial in the house and he never applied to these big companies, never. I know he’s never going to work for them. It’s just the majority of them. I really feel bad for them. They either have to really be very conscious and understand this new mindset of being good leaders and not command control or they don’t have the very long life to live. That’s what I believe.

Melinda Wittstock:         This is interesting. I think you’re right and that paired with the fact that our economy is becoming a gig economy. In other words, people go from gig to gig to gig. They don’t have long-term job security. The corporation in that sense is dying, right?

Brooke Erol:                      Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:         Or they’re hiring differently until people will come and do maybe the work for three months or six months or a year, or they’ll have multiple gigs. Some 40% of the American workforce will be gig workers by 2020. That number is only going to rise. To be a gig worker, you have to be entrepreneurial. You never know where your next gig is coming from so you have to start to get good at marketing, personal branding in a way selling yourself and your services, being differentiated from others.

To be able to do all those things well, you need to know your purpose. I think you’re onto something. You’ve got this whole massive crowd of people who have to figure out what that alignment is because it’s so much easier to do anything if you’re in alignment.

Brooke Erol:                      Yup.

Melinda Wittstock:         Talk to me a little bit about how you found your alignment and how you helped other people find it.

Brooke Erol:                      Sure. It took me years. It’s not like weeks or months even. I started asking that questions like I said on my fourth, fifth year at IBM. By the time I left the company, it was my 11th year. The reason being like I was asking all these questions, I started learning more about what I didn’t like and then also started paying attention to what I like during the day. That’s one of my biggest advice to the people that I work with.

Okay, just pay attention to everything that you do every day and make a list every night of the things that you enjoyed. Even those things in your social life too if you’re having a cup of coffee with a friend, reading the book or at work maybe when you are dealing with your customers, talking to them might be the parts that you like the most which was for me I love building the relationships with my clients, trust worthy relationships with them.

That was the part because I’m a people person. I would like to be around people. Making note of what you feel good about and when you are especially in the flow where you don’t even know how the time flies by, those are really good indications of things that you like. Other things that I’ve done myself and also with my clients, okay I go definitely to have them take some assessments like personality assessments, their strength assessments.

Because if we use our strengths, we can do so much better and I think [Gale Luke 00:35:22] has a great study about that. They work with people who are working on their weaknesses. When they work on that, they just may be get like three or four times better at that but if you work with your strengths and try to get better with your strengths, it’s exponentially better. You get 20, 30 times better, right? I’m just making up the numbers right now but just the difference between working on our weaknesses and strengths.

Not that I’m saying we should never work on our weaknesses but if we know what we are born with which comes easily to us and we integrate that into our life, in work, and social life we just feel more fulfilled because that’s the best part about human beings. We all have different unique skills and talents and everything. Thank God, we don’t all want the same thing in life, right?

If we find that and also find out what we are like really enjoying doing every single day at work and sometimes even work with clients who are still in school, I tell them too, “Which classes do you like better? What gets your interest more than the others?” Paying attention to those really help then I take them from the very general sense and goal and narrow it down to things that they really will enjoy based on their personality, based on their own experiences so far, and then based on what they hate so that they eliminate all of that from their life.

Then after all of that, of course then I ask the biggest question, “Okay. If everything was possible, what would you change in the world?” What do you care about the most? Is it helping for example for maybe people who are unhappy at work just like me? Are you trying to help veterans? Do you want to change the environment? Do you want to protect that? Or do you want to help the kids?

That big picture that they have that they want to have could really combine with the type of business they want to start or the type of business they want. You can combine many different things in one business too. There’s a lot of work behind what I’m saying. It’s not as simple as I tell here because all the things that they want to do also comes with all the limiting beliefs that they have too. Even if they have the biggest dreams, they feel like they can’t achieve that dream or they can’t there because like you said in the beginning we have a lot of things that we bring from our past that gets in the way.

Most of the work that I do is really about those limiting beliefs and then the paradigms rather than the mechanics of this work. There’s the mechanics but there’s also the emotional side that I have to work on. Once you get more aware then you start to overcome all those obstacles and you get to know more about you, and then you feel a lot more aligned than where you were. It’s a long process and I don’t think I had explained it in the most sophisticated way but there’s many, many different steps to it basically.

Melinda Wittstock:         No, Brooke, I think you explained it very well. I think for all of us, it’s a process much like peeling an onion I guess but I’ve arrived with a conclusion that when it comes to your strengths as an entrepreneur, double down on those strengths. Those are your unique talents, your unique purpose, the things that nobody else can do is going to give you the most leverage to be able to grow your business.

The things that you hate doing or you’re not very good at doing, hire your weaknesses. I think an exercise that I always ask people to do is to take literally the proverbial back of an envelope and when as an entrepreneur you know what your true purpose is. It could be you could figure it out just by figuring out what you love to do or what you’re doing when time disappears, sometimes the clues are what we like to do when we were kids like what we played and how we play active.

Brooke Erol:                      Exactly.

Melinda Wittstock:         All those sorts of things but as you start to really figure those things out, think about when you’re doing those things what is your hourly rate if you’re to create new intellectual property or a new product for your business, or land a new channel partner that’s going to bring millions of dollars into your business, or a new product or a service. Your time spent on that, what’s your hourly rate? Is it a thousand dollars an hour? Is it $10,000 of an hour?

If you think on how long’s going to take me to do that relative to how much money it’s going to bring into my business then suddenly it gives you a sense of what your true value is moreover when you start to think, “Should I be fixing that broken link on my website?” or, “Should I be [00:40:44 inaudible] right now?” or, “Should I just doing book keeping entries?” I don’t think so because you’d be paying someone $20, $30, $40 an hour for that rather than your rate of a thousand or 2,000 or 5,000 or 10,000.

Brooke Erol:                      True, yeah. Hiring our weaknesses is one of the best recommendations for people definitely because you want to start doing everything on your own and I totally understand that too especially if you don’t have a lot of capital or money laying around for your business, you want to make it cheap but then at the end of the day just like the calculations you’ve made, it just even cost you more because your hour might be worth 10,000 and you’re trying to do a $10 job on your own too.

At the end it doesn’t make sense but it sometimes gets like it’s hard for people to see that at the very beginning because they want to save money by doing everything on their own, yeah, so true.

Melinda Wittstock:         Going back to this concept of purpose, what were you like as a little girl, Brooke? What did you like to do? Were there any clues in that in terms of what you’re doing now?

Brooke Erol:                      That’s a good question. I would say I was always even as a child I was so extrovert. I really wanted to be with people and really was even like I was thinking about my cousins and I looked after them when I was a little girl myself. I always wanted to help others and see the best in them. I always try to make people feel good about themselves, so I think that has very much to do with what I’m doing because I think one of my strengths is when I look at people I really see the best in them.

Some people see the worst in them and they could use this for another purpose too but for me it’s really I always see that and it’s really helped me as a coach because that’s what I want to highlight and that’s what we want to do. Like you said, it’s almost I have unique value proposition. What is our strengths so that we can make use of it? Mostly people think that if it comes easily to them, it’s not work. It should be suffering. Work is almost like equals to suffering.

I never thought about that and even as a child on what I want to do was really help people and help people see themselves, help them feel good about themselves. What I do today is the same for individuals but also for organizations. That’s coming a little bit with my background in marketing too because in marketing you have to bring you value proposition, what is the best thing about your company that you want to share.

Or when you look at individuals, what is the best part that you’re bringing to this world that you want to share with everybody around you? It’s the same concept for individuals and corporations. I feel like I’m doing this exactly the same thing and maybe a little bit of that was there when I was a little girl. It’s hard to tell but I can see that.

Melinda Wittstock:         That is so interesting. I’m fascinated with some of the ways that you work with your clients to help them connect in with themselves in that sense. Are there a couple examples you could give?

Brooke Erol:                      Sure like in the individual like when I work with professionals individually like I had so many amazing clients but for example one thing that’s just, right because I’m still working with them right now too, she had a really great job. She’s a really tough nice wonderful woman. She had this good paying but obviously she wasn’t fulfilled although she had the best title on herself too, and her dream was to really go around the world with her family for six months and really decide where she wants to live.

She started working with me because obviously we all have fear attached to our dreams and she didn’t know if that would be the right thing. She didn’t know what she needed to do next. She worked as an engineer at this company. She knew she’s didn’t want to do that anymore. To cut the story short, she worked with me for eight, nine months at first that when we first met. Then she really quit her job which to my astonishment because she was the breadwinner in the house too.

They did really go on the six-month trip. They lived in London, they lived in New York, they lived in Istanbul, they lived San Francisco and then one month on each to really feel what it feels like to live there. Then she, they decided to live in New York and she’s been there for five years now. She changed her job. She wanted to do a design work and she’s working with a great designer. She changed her whole life, not only her business and everything but she also moved out and she moved her family with her.

That was amazing to watch and to see what can happen when you overcome your fear and your limiting beliefs, and you have somebody to support you in that journey. Somebody supported me in my journey so I believe that totally make a difference in people’s lives by that. That would be an individual example that I can give you.

Melinda Wittstock:         Yes. Everybody, this is so important. If you don’t have a mentor or a support network around yourself, people really who have, unconditionally have your back at the same time will offer you constructive criticism.

Brooke Erol:                      Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:         I don’t like the word “criticism” so much but help you see your shadow, help you see the gaps, help you see things that you don’t see, and help you focus. All of those things, we all need that. Too many entrepreneurs and people generally suffer all these things in isolation and in silence which is just not necessary.

Brooke Erol:                      Unfortunate but I was feeling very lonely asking those big questions to myself years ago at IBM. I feel so much better now because I had a lot of people just like me who was definitely trying to change the work place and there’s a lot more discussion nowadays than there’re used to be, so that’s a good thing. Just like some of the things that you are saying, there are amazing companies who really are a stand for a purpose, who are doing good in the world. They don’t use command control.

They give the dignity back to their people and they are doing amazing with their bottom lines too. That’s the mindset that we have to change. Some leaders out there or especially in these big corporations don’t believe it can happen but it is happening. There are examples all around the world in every industry for every size of the company. Even the big ones can do it. It’s just the mindset has to change. That’s the awareness that I am trying to create by speaking, by writing because that’s the first step where you have to know and believe it is possible.

Melinda Wittstock:         Brooke, what are the next steps for you? Where are you taking your company next? What’s the big vision? Where’re you headed?

Brooke Erol:                      Yeah, thank you. I’m collaborating with a lot of people which we used to call competitors. There’s lots of people like me who are exactly doing working in the same purpose trying to make the workplace much more humanistic than it is right now. What I’m doing with them, we just wrote a book, completed a book together. I think it’s going to be an amazing book called From Hierarchy to High Performance that’s going to come out in August.

I’m looking forward to that so that more leaders can read that then understand a new mindset. I’m speaking in many, many events and conferences. I was invited to a future work conference recently in May where I talked to around a thousand people about why purpose matters and how we can align our purpose with the companies, and why companies with purpose are doing better in every way possible. Speaking is really important to me because I feel like we’re still in the awareness stage.

Writing is for the same reason but of course I’m looking forward to work with more leaders who understand these concepts and working with them as a consultant so that way I can get them to a place where they want to be because I feel like there’s so many with just seated problems with the engagement attracting the right talent and retaining them but they have no idea what to do. It’s sad for me to watch.

It’s almost I’m getting so impatient sometimes. Let’s do something. We have to do it because you’re not going to survive otherwise.

Melinda Wittstock:         This is so true. Brooke, how can people find you and work with you?

Brooke Erol:                      Thank you. First of all, my website is purposeful.business, so it’s www.purposeful.business. There’s a session that you can have with me and then you can also contact me in that website too. I also write a lot and I share most of that on my LinkedIn profile. You can find me by searching Brooke Ozlem Erol or just Brooke Erol. I’m also on Twitter @boerol1. I write a lot and people can follow me there too.

Melinda Wittstock:         That’s wonderful and of course I will put all those details in the show notes for everybody so you didn’t have to have a pen to write all that down. Brooke, thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us today.

Brooke Erol:                      Thank you, Melinda. It was a great conversation. Thanks for the great and good questions that you asked me. I appreciate you too.