804 Laura Casselman:

I’m a big planner so I plan my goals for the year, I break my goals down into quarters, I break my quarters down into months and then into weeks and then into days. And I work my plan because life is going to throw us curveballs all day long, and I need to have the plan in place to handle everything else and not get thrown off track by the curveballs.

The late Beatle John Lennon once joked that life is what happens to you when you’re making other plans, and often that is 100% the case with entrepreneurship. Yet award-winning entrepreneur Laura Casselman has honed her process to the point where she runs two fast-growing companies and has built revenue to as much as $2 bn. So today we get into her secrets of success.

MELINDA

Hi, I’m Melinda Wittstock and welcome to Wings of Inspired Business, where we share the inspiring entrepreneurial journeys, epiphanies, and practical advice from successful female founders … so you have everything you need at your fingertips to build the business and life of your dreams. I’m a 5-time serial entrepreneur and the CEO and founder of Podopolo, the interactive app revolutionizing podcast discovery and discussion and making podcasting profitable for creators. I’d like to invite you to take a minute, download Podopolo from either app store, listen to the rest of this episode there, and join the conversation with your questions, perspectives, experiences, and advice … Because together we’re stronger, and we all soar higher when we fly together.

Today we meet an inspiring entrepreneur who has run and built several Inc. 5000 Fastest Growing Companies in America four times and increased revenue from $100M to over $2B.

Laura Casselman is the CEO of JVZoo, a Software-as-a-Service platform matching sellers of both digital and physical products to be matched with affiliates. She’s also  co-founder of media agency Vidastreet, and author of the Wall St Journal bestselling book Trust Your Increments. She has nearly two decades of experience in growing sales and revenue, improving customer service, and aggressively controlling expenses in competitive markets.

What does it take to scale revenue for a company to as much as $2 billion? Or building businesses to be on the Inc 5000 fastest growing companies not once but 4 times?

It’s not easy and today we learn the secrets of Laura Casselman, who watched her entrepreneur father very closely as a young kid, and learned how to be extraordinarily efficient and focused with her time. She was even building revenue at several companies as she also danced for the New York City Rockettes.

Among Laura’s accomplishments:

• Generating $40 million in profitable ad spend for her clients at her marketing agency Vidastreet – with $135 million in sales
• Building high performance sales teams by sharing her own bonuses with her teams and fostering a corporate culture where her employees thrive
• Being honored with Stevie Awards for both Executive and Woman of the Year, a CEO World Award for Female CEO of the Year, and a Pillar World Award for Employer’s Diversity Achievement of the Year.

Need I say more?

We talk today about what it takes to grow not one but two fast-growing highly profitable companies.

Let’s put on our wings with the inspiring Laura Casselman and be sure to download the podcast app Podopolo so we can keep the conversation going after the episode.

Melinda Wittstock:

Laura, welcome to Wings.

Laura Casselman:

Thank you for having me.

Melinda Wittstock:

Okay, so I’m just curious about one thing. You’re doing so many things all at the same time. Women can do that, but not necessarily at this level. You’re the CEO of a company you don’t own, you’re a co-founder of another company, you have another startup, you got a book. Oh my goodness, how? Just let’s break all that down. How much [inaudible 00:00:32] like?

Laura Casselman:

Yes. Well, as you said earlier, entrepreneurs juggle everything. And we know how to get it done. It’s a big step and the process, but for me, I’m a big planner so I plan my goals for the year, I break my goals down into quarters, I break my quarters down into months and then into weeks and then into days. And I work my plan because life is going to throw us curveballs all day long, and I need to have the plan in place to handle everything else and not get thrown off track by the curveballs.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh my goodness. Now, I don’t know a lot of entrepreneurs that do it with such precision like that. Have you always been that way or was this something that was learned along the way?

Laura Casselman:

I believe a little of both. I think that a lot was instilled in me. I was a dancer as a child. I took dance class. But at a very early age, I auditioned and joined a performing dance group, so we traveled and performed a lot. My parents set expectations for my school and the grades that I needed to have. And the dance group I was in, they set expectations of, “Hey, these are the numbers you’re performing. We expect to win. You better be rehearsed and practiced. But also, here’s all of the costume pieces you are not to forget.” And so I started really young with write down your checklist; don’t forget these things; be prepared. How do you manage getting your homework done? Studying for your tests, going to piano, going to tennis, and then showing up prepared for dance to perform at a high level. And I just got really accustomed to making list and checking off the list to make sure I got everything done.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh gosh, you’re bringing back so many memories for me because I was a dancer and a competitive figure skater, and the same thing with homework and same thing with all the other things. you go back in the entrepreneur’s timeline, invariably there’s something like that in their childhood that made it possible for them to perform at such a high level with so much on their plates.

Laura Casselman:

Absolutely. And I always say too, I believe kids should be involved in a team sport growing up. It teaches you so many things about life, and especially for not only entering the workforce, but if you want to eventually run your own company. And you don’t know what your kid’s going to want to do, but if you give them this foundation and let them get their feet wet and working as a team and possibly becoming the captain of their team and leading that team, it helps them make a lot of decisions about their life, what they like, what they don’t like, and preparing them for the workforce that they will likely have to enter unless you are from generational wealth.

Melinda Wittstock:

So true, because so much of entrepreneurship is really about the team, the team you build, how you lead that team. It’s hard enough to have a great idea, a great idea that solves a real problem, that the market’s big enough, all those things that are almost a given. But without the team and without being able to get the right people in the right seats and motivate them and such, the best idea, the best opportunity in the world, even with lucky timing, even with all those things, you still might fail if you don’t have that team. Actually understanding character, understanding what gets people to do… All that stuff is vital. In a team sport, I guess you’re going to learn a lot of that. Is that something that you felt that you really learned very young?

Laura Casselman:

It is. I played sports in school, but dance to me was a team sport. I was a part of that troupe. And then I went on to become a Radio City Rockette, which is precision dancing. It only works if the team works.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, your legs all have to be at the same height. That is incredible precision. I’ve always wondered about that. Man, that’s a lot of rehearsing to get there.

Laura Casselman:

It is. But the height thing is incorrect. I think they changed the height back down to 5’5.5″ now, but 5’5.5″ to 5’10.5″. And it’s an illusion the way that they are lined up, the ladies, that makes them look like they’re all the same height.

Melinda Wittstock:

But I think your legs when you kick are all perfectly aligned. That’s what always blows me away.

Laura Casselman:

Yeah, it is. And it is hard work and working as a team and then having that dance captain, that leader that motivates you to do it four to six times a day.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. 100%. I can see the through line into business of all of that. How did you go from being a Rockette to being a CEO? Not only with a company that you are the CEO of and all the other ones that you’ve built or run or whatever, all the Inc 5,000, fastest growing, all the things, right?

Laura Casselman:

Mm-hmm.

Melinda Wittstock:

What was that transition that made you go into business and entrepreneurship?

Laura Casselman:

I watched my father run his own company while I was growing up. And I saw all of it. I saw the headaches, I saw the stress. I saw him controlling his own time, having the freedom to make the choices of what he was going to do with his time and on what schedule. I got a really great glimpse into entrepreneurship as a child.

But I declared it three years old I was going to become a Radio City Rockette, so I was on the dance track that I was going to be a professional dancer. What I knew was that, one, I said I was going to do it and I was going to do it. I was going to New York City from my little one stoplight, southern town in South Carolina. I was going to go there. I was going to dance with the Rockettes.

And then I also knew once I got to New York that I was not going to retire from dance and open a dance studio, that that was not my path. And I was leaning towards running companies because I had seen my father run his company, I had seen other people that ran companies, and I thought, I’m not just going to be a cog in the will. I can’t just be an employee. How do I do this? And if I am an employee, I’ve got to be an employee at the top level.

My entire time in New York, while I was dancing with the Rockettes, I was also building my corporate resume. I would go and dance for the three months that was required of the year with the Radio City Rockettes, and then I would leave after the Christmas spectacular was done and step back into corporate America. And my goal was to perform as high as I could perform so that they would allow me to leave for the next year for three months and they would hire me back or welcome me back. And I became so good at doing that that I always was welcomed back to a higher position.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s amazing that you can take that. Most people can’t pull that off. That’s extraordinary.

Laura Casselman:

Let me tell you though, I did not do that without a lot of planning and realizing that teamwork was involved. What I did is I looked… I was running different athletic clubs in New York, climbing the corporate ladder, whether it was Equinox or New York Sports Clubs or those type things. And what I realized is that sales and revenue was king. And when I realized that, I was like, “I can’t do that on my own. It takes the team.” Instead of saying as a sales rep or as the sales manager or as the general manager as I climbed the ladder each time, saying, “This is the bonus that’s available to me if I hit these numbers,” I thought I’ll never get the bonus if it’s just me. What I did was each time I met with my team and I said, “Hey, here’s the deal. You guys get nothing when I hit my numbers. You’re just employees here, but you’re on my team so here’s what I’m going to do. If we, this team, hits our numbers, because my numbers are now yours, I’m going to split my bonus with you.”

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, wow. Okay, so that’s abundance thinking. And you motivated your team. You weren’t coming from scarcity, like it’s all me, me, me, me, me. You’re being generous in that sense. And then you got the whole team working for it so then your numbers are going to be through the roof, right?

Laura Casselman:

Exactly. And so I went from running a department to running the whole location to running the entire east side of New York City. And the reason I did that is because if you were on my team, you knew you were getting more out of showing up and doing your job. And so people felt the group atmosphere, they felt the team. And even when I stepped out for three months, my team kept working for me because they wanted me to come back. And I wanted to be on their team as well.

Melinda Wittstock:

My goodness, Laura, that’s just genius. I don’t really know of very many people who work that way. Do you? You’re a real pioneer of this. Are there other people or mentors that you’ve had that have done this, or is this entirely from you?

Laura Casselman:

I don’t know. I had never seen anyone do it before, but I do remember when I was a kid, my mom listening to Where There’s a Will, There’s a Way. I knew that I wanted to dance professionally, I knew I wanted to climb the corporate ladder, so I had to find the way to make a company want me to work for them and allow me to leave for three months out of the year so I could do that dream of dancing with the Rockettes and then allow me to come back and to let me keep building my resume. And the company wasn’t going to show me the path, they didn’t have the idea of the path, so I brought the path with me. I truly believed what I had heard, where there’s a will, there’s a way; find the way.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, it’s so funny, my daughter, when she went to an all-girls school in middle school and their mantra was find a way or make one, which is genius. But unfortunately, most people don’t have that within them or they haven’t been taught that or the school system hasn’t shared that or… Right?

Laura Casselman:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

Very few people know that. I’m getting the connection now between the planning, but what’s interesting to me though too is you have such clarity of intention all your life. You, it seems, have always known what you want. And a lot of people actually don’t. Even when they start a business, they want to succeed, or one day somebody will buy us. And it’s all a little bit vague, right? You know?

Laura Casselman:

Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:

But you are very specific.

Laura Casselman:

I am very specific. And I will say this. When I was younger, even when people in my class were trying to decide where am I going to college? What is my future plan? I didn’t resonate with that. And it was me alone. None of my classmates had clarity like I did. And I don’t necessarily have the best advice for that other than I tried a lot of things. My parents allowed me to try a lot of things. They did set parameters around those things and their expectations.

But I was able, through my childhood, to try a lot of things, including businesses, starting with… The first thing was selling Girl Scout cookies. And I was really good at selling Girl Scout cookies. And I liked being really good at things, and so I would keep trying other things to find out what I was good at doing.

Every summer I had to work. Even before I was old enough to be hired from companies, I would cut people’s grass just for money and income to buy the things I wanted to buy that my parents weren’t going to buy me. And I think I got an instilled worth ethic in me at a very young age. But also, I was able to try things out and say, “Yes, I like this. No, I don’t like this.” And I knew the path I was going on because I was able to experience a lot at an early age.

Melinda Wittstock:

Okay. Now I’m really understanding though, because it’s not just the planning but trying other things, how you can be the CEO of JV Zoo but also a co-founder of a startup company and manage all of that. Let’s talk about Vida Street. Tell me more about what Vida Street is and where it’s at and what it does.

Laura Casselman:

Sure. Vida Street is a media agency. Actually found my business partner; he was a user of JV Zoo. Still is. We were both at an event in Portugal years ago speaking at this event. And I just brought up to him, and I said, “Hey, I’m watching how you’re making all these other people so much money. Would you like to make that for yourself? I’ll show you the way.” And he thought about it, and he said, “Yeah, yeah, I would.” And I said, “Great.” He lived in Europe. And I said, “And if you want to move to America, I will help you, but I can’t do that long distance.” And three weeks later, he moved to America.

I helped him with his own company first, and then we decided to partner a few years later. And it’s a great decision. One, it’s about finding the right person. If you’re going to start at your own company and you’re going to work with other people, it’s about finding the people that have skillsets you don’t. He certainly has a skillset that I do not. And also, he has good work ethic. We are similar in that way. It was a great partnership to start. He is the talent is what I like to say. He’s my media buyer. And we have this company where we sell for the largest companies or do media for the largest companies in financial publishing and e-commerce, real estate. And it’s a really cool gig. We get to see what all these other people are doing in their companies, which is always insightful and helps you understand more about how you’re going to run your own business and what’s working and what’s not working. But it’s fun to work with people that you enjoy working with as well.

Melinda Wittstock:

I think you said something very important, which bears repeating. Say if you have a co-founder or your founding team or whatever, they have to have skills you don’t. But there has to be an alignment though on things like work ethic and character and the mission and integrity, all those sorts of things. There’s got to be in alignment at least in those things, but they have to be different from you. And a lot of founders make the mistake of just through your own social networks, you end up hiring people that are like you. It can easily happen.

Laura Casselman:

Agree. And another thing too, if you’re starting your own companies and you’re an entrepreneur, everyone gets very excited and caught up at the beginning because there’s these big ideas and these grand plans for the future. But I say it over and over again, and I know that you know this, “You have to plan your divorce in the honeymoon phase,” because eventually you will either want to sell the company, one of you will not want to work as hard or leave the company, or one of you will get wrapped up in, I don’t know, the things that are happening that don’t necessarily drive the company forward or move the needle or get the work done. And you have to plan for those things, so you have to lay out in your operating agreement what the expectation of each person and the amount of work done by each person as well as if you’re going to divorce or separate later how that looks while you still like each other.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, that’s so interesting. You do a pre-mortem.

Laura Casselman:

Yes. Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:

Tell me about that. Break that down. How does that actually work? What do those agreements… And how do you get those? Everybody’s really happy, you’re hiring the person, it’s really great, or maybe it’s a co-founder of the business, whatever. And take me through that process of how you do that. It’s really interesting.

Laura Casselman:

This is for when you have business partners, other people that own a percentage of your company. And I always sit down with our attorney and we say, “Hey, let’s plan out the expectation of everyone. If we’re growing and things are going and things are going well and we’re all happy, but what is the work expectation of each person?” If it’s you expect someone to commit 40 hours a week to be your equal in running the company, then you need to lay those things out. If it’s that you’re like, “Hey, we want to eventually move into board seats only,” and their paid board seats, you need to lay those things out at the beginning.

You need to determine if people, when they move to board seats, can still be employees of the company and also draw a salary because what you don’t think about at that point in time, naturally, is that what you in the back of your head may think everyone wants is not necessarily what other people want. You may want to work 40 hours a week or more for the rest of your life because you love it so much, but other people may say, “No, I just want to work until I have enough money to just sit back and enjoy my life and to still claim that that’s my company.” And nothing’s wrong, it’s just that you have to define it and set expectations for the company. But also, just like people don’t get married with the expectation of divorcing, people don’t start companies together with the expectation of separating, but it happens so many times.

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh, it happens so many times. And what’s really horrible is when it’s a 50/50.

Laura Casselman:

Yes. Exactly.

Melinda Wittstock:

I always say avoid that.

Laura Casselman:

Or at least determine in your operating agreement if you can’t make a decision together, you cannot decide on the same thing, what happens.

Melinda Wittstock:

What happens?

Laura Casselman:

How do you do it in advance? You need to know because-

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. So many people don’t do that, right?

Laura Casselman:

Exactly.

Melinda Wittstock:

So in those negotiations, as it’s gone through the years, Laura, have people known what they actually wanted? And what happens when they say that’s what they want, but then people change of course, and what they want maybe in their 20s or 30s or 40s from what they want, getting into their 50s or whatever, their circumstances change. All sorts things that can happen.

Laura Casselman:

I’ve seen this go well because people planned for it. And even if, at the time of separating, people didn’t love that the person that was leaving or the person that changed their mind or disagreed with everyone else was getting their fair share, they didn’t also leave feeling gross about it. They were like, “Yes, we all sat down, we all agreed to this. In the event that there was a separation or a breakup of the company, this is how it would be handled.” It resolves from the beginning there being an ugly fight because it’s already fully defined and everyone already agreed to it. But I’ve seen where people didn’t plan and people thought, hey, we don’t even know if this idea’s going to work so we don’t need to put money into an attorney doing an operating agreement. And I’ve seen it go into years of litigation and get ugly.

And so because I have seen that, because I have lived through that. I make sure I never have to do it again. If it’s a company I’m involved in, there will be a thorough operating agreement. And if later down the road people are still all working together and they’re all happy, but like you said, people change, they get older and their ideas change, you can also have a meeting where you say, “Hey, let’s update our operating agreement.” You work through that with your attorney. And if everyone agrees, everyone will sign and adopt the new operating agreement. But if not, you still have your original to fall back on where everyone is protected and there is a plan laid out for one person or all people separating.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s just so smart. I think on the legal thing at startups when you don’t really have any money so you’re bootstrapping, and I think a lot of people skimp on that legal advice. I know I’ve been hit by that. Because you’re just trying to figure out, if you don’t come at it from a lot of wealth, say, okay?

Laura Casselman:

Mm-hmm.

Melinda Wittstock:

And you bootstrapped, so there’s a lot of corners that get cut invariably What do you advise people in terms of what are the non-negotiables that you really have to be on top of regardless in that sense? You’re talking about the operating agreement, you’re talking about these different structures before you even get going.

Laura Casselman:

For me, in a company, starting a company, having an operating agreement in bylaws is non-negotiable. I just will tell people, “If I’m going to partner with you and I feel strongly enough about this, I will personally pay for it and say when the company makes the money, it can reimburse me.”

That’s another thing too, just put it in writing it. Even if it’s an email and you get everyone that you’re working with saying, “Yes, we agree to this. You can get reimbursed for how much it costs.” Whatever you do, put it in writing, make sure everyone agrees to it and it’s electronically tracked, whether that’s email or you do DocuSign or whatever. Those are things that I think are non-negotiables.

For me, also, a lot of people in startup phases think, I know this is a law, but I think we can go in the gray and really bend this rule right now because we just can’t afford to do that. That’s a personal thing for me. I don’t agree with it. People know that about me when they go to work with me. I will push to the extent of the law, but I don’t break the laws in business. I’m just not willing to go to battle with the FTC, FCC, whatever. I don’t have it in me. I don’t have the time to do that.

Melinda Wittstock:

No, it’s horrible. And there’s so many things too and there’s so many labor laws and things like that that are changing all the time or getting more punitive for startups. And often, it’s easy to be ignorant, but that’s not a defense.

Laura Casselman:

Agree. And so I just let people know from the beginning, “If you want to partner, these are things about me you need to know because I will not bend on them.”

Melinda Wittstock:

Getting back to your plan where you’re saying, “Okay, this is what my year looks like,” and all this. Just even having that vision to the detail, because a lot of visionaries have the vision, but they don’t necessarily tie that to an operational plan that can break it down like you do. It’s almost like a backward planning sequence. We want to be here by the end of the year, so this is what we have to do in all the different areas of the company to get there quarter by quarter, month by month, week by week, day by day. That’s extraordinary. Someday, I’d love to see what that looks like for you. It sounds like an amazing amount of work. Do you sit down and do that at the beginning of every year? Or just work down the process.

Laura Casselman:

I do, I do.

Melinda Wittstock:

How long does it take you?

Laura Casselman:

It actually doesn’t take me that long because I’ve been doing it for a long time. And I’ve trained people on it. When I consult with companies, I train people on it because I’ll have another CEO or say an executive at another company that’s like, “How do you get it all done every day? How do you do it?” And I’m like, “Because I have a list.”

And so for me, it’s easy to set the big goals. Those are easy and they’re not that many. It’s less big goals that you’re setting. But breaking them down is really accountability. Breaking them down for me is like, okay, if I am reviewing, which I should be always reviewing to make sure I’m on track. If I’m reviewing Q1, what is the expectation? Where should I be at Q1 so that, at the end of Q4, am where I need to be? It’s really just breaking those things down.

We all had to write papers in school, so it’s like when you break down the paper that you’re writing, once you do that big overview and then you just break it down to the next blocks, next blocks, it doesn’t become that heavy. But what does become heavy for everybody is that, no matter what the plan is, things keep piling on daily. Things that we didn’t expect pile on or we underestimated how much something requires or how long it’s going to take or a third party says, “Hey, you’re also going to need these two or three things to work with us,” and you didn’t even know. Without my daily list and adding all those things in, I wouldn’t get it done for one company let alone the multiple companies that I run or consult with. Or even getting my two and a half year old’s stuff done, if I didn’t have it on my list that this is the day that I do her laundry or this is the day that I have to take this stuff to school for her, I would never remember or get it all done because there’s so much in a given day.

And one thing that I’m really good about is once I’ve broken it down, my daily checklist… There’s different people I follow online for inspiration, but there’s one executive that I saw recently write that one of the worst decisions a leader can do is to choose to take cheap dopamine hits. I understand where she’s coming from, but I’m going to change that around a little bit to say cheap dopamine hits that are controlled are great to give you motivation. My motivation, which I have trained my brain for, is the checklist and physically checking off the list daily. Every check mark on my to-do list is a quick dopamine hit that has trained my brain to go for the next quick dopamine hit in my checklist. It’s a cheap hit, but the cheap hit leads to the big goal because it’s planned.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right? Yeah. That’s the thing, it’s like every founder has a different thing in terms of what motivates and what makes you feel good. You’ve got to have the wins. One of the things we do on our team is that Friday… We’re a virtual company, but we all get together and celebrate our wins along the way because if you don’t do that, it’s like it can start to feel like, yeah… And that’s true, like your work is never done, you know what I mean?

Laura Casselman:

Mm-hmm. Exactly.

Melinda Wittstock:

But you’ve got to the journey, so you got to pace and say, “Okay, yeah, we actually got that done.” Or if we didn’t get it done, what was the reason? And trying to lead people into being much more conscious or present or aware of where they are. It’s so easy just to get into the grind. And you feel like you’re productive, but you can be on a work treadmill not going anywhere, right?

Laura Casselman:

Absolutely.

Melinda Wittstock:

So easily. It’s so easy to fall into that, so having the systems in place to a avoid that. I just love the way you think. I’m learning a lot. I’m just like, “Okay, I’m just going to make my whole team listen to this episode.”

Laura Casselman:

And I think too we get decision fatigue. We have so many major decisions to make that at the beginning of our day, we don’t need to waste our brain power of, okay, what do I have to do today? Let me figure out what has to be done today. For me, I don’t have to figure out how I need to get my day started, the list is there and anything I didn’t finish the day before. One, I’m not a procrastinator. I don’t have time to procrastinate. I don’t have that luxury in life. And also, I like myself so much I will not do it to myself. I don’t procrastinate and make my next day awful. If I can’t get something off my checklist in a day, it means either I’m waiting on a third party, I can’t complete this test because someone else hasn’t gotten back with me, so I move it to another list further in the week. And maybe that means it’s tomorrow because it’s a team member of mine and I’m waiting on them and I’ve already said, “I expect this tomorrow.” But if it’s another company that I’m working with and I can’t control their timeline, I will move it maybe three days down my list. And it’s just a friendly followup. And I don’t ever let it go.

I always work off a notebook. The first page in my notebook has… And it may be pages now because it’s each company’s name and the big goal for the companies that year, and then I break them all down throughout my notebook. But if I cannot finish a list but I’ve moved too many pages past that list, I just have one of those little sticky tabs that I put at the top of the notebook that says, “Hey, it doesn’t matter how many pages you are past this, you better keep flipping back to this page until you can remove this sticky tab cause you’re not done with that checklist.”

Melinda Wittstock:

Oh wow, that’s really, really smart. I’m listening to you saying, wow, gosh, wouldn’t that be so amazing to do that. But for anybody listening to this, including myself, it’s like, oh my god, how do I start? Right?

Laura Casselman:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

To be able to do that. Take me through how you teach other people to be able to do this and be consistent with it.

Laura Casselman:

Sure. If you can’t start with your whole year, then start with what do I want to accomplish this month? And just start it fresh at the beginning of a month. What do I want to accomplish this coming month? And then after you have those things, every single day for the next month look at that main list and write out your to-do list for today so that you are, by the end of the day, one full step closer to accomplishing this month’s goals.

And it usually takes three to four weeks to get yourself like conditioned to this is my new habit. If you say, “I’m just going to do this for one month,” by the end of the month, you’ll be committed to doing it. But also, the more you do it, the more efficient you become, the more you realize, hey, here’s what I need to do to get better at this.

Because I can show you and take you through my notebook of how I do things. I’m even looking at my first page of this notebook right now, and I have… This is a new process. After years of doing this, this notebook has a different process at the front of this. And in all caps I wrote before the step of what I was going to accomplish reach company, it’s in all caps, whether it’s simplify, meaning this process needs simplification, or it is improve because I need to improve this for our customers. There’s data. There’s more data I can extract from this. And all of these lead to revenue, everything. But I just also wanted to put it in a block of these are all my things I need to simplify. These are all the processes I have to improve. These are all the things I can extract more data from so that I can get more granular and make sure that we make more money.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, 100%. Oh my goodness. Okay. I’m just going to come mastermind with you sometime.

Laura Casselman:

Let’s do it.

Melinda Wittstock:

Just I want to look over your shoulder and look at your book.

Laura Casselman:

I’m like, let’s do it. And people have different ways of working their list. I’m a pen to paper person, which is… I run tech companies and still pen to paper works for me. But maybe-

Melinda Wittstock:

Actually, there’s some neuroscience around that because when you actually write it down as opposed to typing it, it becomes imprinted in you.

Laura Casselman:

That’s right. But taking just-

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s why I journal so much. Yeah.

Laura Casselman:

Use what works for you, but just get a process and follow it and understand that when you plan, it takes less brain power every day.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s true. Actually, there’s a peace of mind around it. My goodness, Laura, you have to come back on another episode because there’s so much more that we didn’t even explore, but so much value in this episode. Thank you so very much. And congratulations for what you’ve been able to do. It’s really very inspiring for everybody listening, and I just wanted to make sure that people knew how to find you or work with you, say if they want to hire Vida Street or anything you’re doing at JV Zoo or get your book, Trust Your Increments, all the things. What’s the best way?

Laura Casselman:

Absolutely. You can visit me at lauracasselman.com. That last name’s C-A-S-S-E-L-M-A-N. Or you can find me on social media like Instagram, @thelauracasselman.

Melinda Wittstock:

Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us today.

Laura Casselman:

Thank you. It’s been a joy.