Career Coaching Secrets

The Polyvagal Path: How Lori Wallace Helps Clients Find Inner Calm in Job Search

• Davis Nguyen

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Rexhen interviews Lori Wallace, founder/CEO of Career Ecology, a human-centered job search and workforce transformation expert. Inspired by 9/11, Lori's mission is to bring healing and connection to work.

Starting as a side hustle, Career Ecology grew organically, fueled by referrals and affordable tech. Lori developed a "responsive resume" style, empowering clients to write their own. Her goal is to go full-time, scaling through a hybrid model of online training, group calls, and editors, aiming for broad accessibility over high prices.

Her main challenge is balancing this lower price point with high volume to replace her current income. Lori advises coaches to embrace organic growth, stay open to feedback, and scale through holistic, supportive programs.

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Lori Wallace:

Kind of a miracle. I've talked to people who have established their coaching or wanting to bring their expertise to the world, which I really honor. And I know of many people that have put a great deal of their personal money into it. And I have not done that. I have always funded it within my day job and made sure that it was not a significant. I was just like, I'm going to take it so that it feels like it's wrapped in, but it's

Davis Nguyen:

Welcome to Career Coaching Secrets, the podcast where we talk with successful career coaches on how they built their success and the hard lessons they learned along the way. My name is Davis Nguyen, and I'm the founder of Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to $100,000 years, $100,000 months, and even $100,000 weeks. Before Purple Circle, I've grown several seven and eight figure career coaching business myself, and I've been a consultant at two career coaching businesses that are doing over a hundred million dollars each. Whether you're an established coach or building your practice for the first time, you'll discover the secrets to elevating your coaching business. Hey

Rexhen Doda:

everyone, welcome to another episode of Career Coaching Secrets Podcast. Today's guest is Lori Wallace, founder and CEO of Career Ecology and IG Medical Search, a soulful force in the world of job search, workforce transformation, and career empowerment. Lori brings two decades of executive recruiting experience and lends it with deeply human, holistic approach to navigating work life. Her journey into this calling began in the wake of 9-11, seven months pregnant and working in finance, Lori felt a shift, a calling towards radical kindness. Since then, she's been on a mission to bring healing and connection into the space of work. Through career ecology, Lori empowers job seekers to liberate authenticity at every touch point, resume, interviews, networking and beyond. She also supports organizations during times of change, transforming outplacement into empowerment and recruitment into meaningful connection. Her philosophy, work is the modern day hero's journey and no one should walk it alone. Laurie, welcome to the show. I'm so excited to have you here.

Lori Wallace:

Thank you so much for that beautiful introduction. It's good to be here.

Rexhen Doda:

It's a pleasure to have you on. Lori, tell me a little bit more about what inspired you to become a work-life coach.

Lori Wallace:

You hit upon it in that moment of being very pregnant when the world shifted in an instant. You know, when I realized that that second tower falling was not an accident. I did not move to a place of fear or anger. I moved to a place of recognizing the despair in the world. And I knew that we needed to flood it with this feminine aspects of kindness and nurturing and collaboration. And I started to imagine and dream of what I could do beyond finance as a new mom. And really at that point, I kind of opened up to all the possibilities and was recruited by my recruiter, ultimately to be a recruiter. It was sort of a triple whammy there. And I thought, oh, so I took a massive pay cut from 180,000 down to 40,000 draw. And 40,000 draws, not even money. You owe it back next month. So it was a big commitment. But I knew I wanted to transform headhunting into human connection. And so I've always been somewhat of an activist. And so after two years, I started my own company so I could really live it that way. And honestly, there's a pro out there right now who agrees. Honestly, I think that it's the only way I could have done it and stayed well, healthy and sane. I have to activate my heart, have a deep sense of meaning with anything I give my time over to. And that's very aligned with Viktor Frankl. who is that famous psychologist who of course passed but around World War II was taken to the concentration camps and he did study what it was that motivated people to move forward in their lives and to even live, survive. And it was meaning. And so really I've been here to touch meaning in every corner of life.

Rexhen Doda:

And how does the journey look like from the point that you started your coaching business to where you are at today? It's been almost 20 years.

Lori Wallace:

Yeah, I'm going to answer that. And I'm going to ask you a question before I go on. Can you hear that crow when it is crowing?

Rexhen Doda:

It's really

Lori Wallace:

loud. I mean, it's right there. I think I better close my door. Was it okay earlier? It wasn't too loud because it was loud here.

Rexhen Doda:

I could

Lori Wallace:

hear it,

Rexhen Doda:

but not that loud.

Lori Wallace:

Not bad. Okay, now it's closed. It was mocked at me. It was literally right there on my thing. Okay, can you ask that question again?

Rexhen Doda:

So is that a pet you have, or is it just like a

Lori Wallace:

random crow? No, they fly around here. We do have a couple big birds, but I've never had one sit right there on this twig that is practically on my door. And look at me and crow like that. I was like trying to

Rexhen Doda:

go away. Interesting. Those are very smart creatures.

Lori Wallace:

they are and you know what they actually symbolize um you know the wisdom the idea of earth wisdom and then the veil and then you know dream wisdom or archetype so i take that as a good omen for us

Rexhen Doda:

cool great well let me ask the question again so the question is uh tell me more about your journey from the point that you started your coaching business to where you are at today

Lori Wallace:

Oh, gosh, such a journey. And really, when you begin anything that's so heart-based and you turn in and say, I want to be of service, what's really critical is that you understand that only 50% is your intention and the other 50% is mystery. So my career has grown and moved and turned based on changes in the environment in myself, but also the external environment. So the next big change after roughly 10 years or so working as executive recruiter for very complex hospital systems and bringing this level for new grads all the way up to CEOs came when One week, just out of the blue and around 2015, 16, for some reason, I had like eight people that are interviewing for jobs. I had a full slate, but nobody was saying yes. And my husband came up to me and brought a little spreadsheet and said, we're running out of money. And in a month, we're going to have to go into our equity line. And after that, we have three months of that. And then we got to go. So it was a spiritual moment of collapse and seeing that And I'm the primary breadwinner in my family. My husband's a stay-at-home dad. And I thought, oh, no. Is this the moment that I've dreaded that I can't pay my mortgage? You know, I really had an existential fear of that. I felt like a loser using that horrible word. I'm walking around feeling that way. I ended up talking with a therapist as well as my blind neighbor, who I used to read to on a weekly basis. And they said, you know, you've got three months. This is the time to collaborate with chance. Come up with your pathway. Three different ways this could take your life that all have meaning. And the pathway was to just hunker down and try to see it through, or at that point to try to birth something new, which ultimately was Queer Ecology, or to just sell our home and kind of move to a cheaper place. So long story short, one and two did not work out initially. And we did sell our home when we moved to San Diego, where it was 30% cheaper to live. And the minute I got here, my business, so all the recruiting was there. So we were affirmed that this was the right move. And then we had presidential election, that fateful presidential election. And I felt all of the trauma. I could feel the disturbance of the force. You want to use like, you know, Star Wars language. And Queer Ecology was born. It was basically what I've already been doing, but I decided it was time for me to bring this now consolidated for all the people that keep reaching out to me. But if they're not a direct candidate for a job that I was searching on, I couldn't spend the time with them. And I know we're going to talk a little bit later too about how I could make that happen and scale it and things. Because at first it was just the calling to do it and to write it and to distill down what was the magic? What were the opportunities? How had I helped people succeed as They came through me in recruiting. How could I make that available to others? So that's really been the path. And it was a collapse and sort of just like a rebirth, a Phoenix moment out of that loss of income, sudden loss of income.

Rexhen Doda:

And so when it comes to the people they work with, do they belong to a certain target group or is it a broad audience that you're serving? Apart from knowing who they are, what transformation do you help them achieve? Can you share more about these two as well?

Lori Wallace:

Initially, because my recruiting has always been focused in healthcare, I had a lot of healthcare people coming through. But then when I came to San Diego, it was difficult to start to network initially because of COVID ensuing and things. But ultimately the word got out what I was doing and people were recommending their friends. I realized too that the support that I provide is very important right now for youth, for college or high school graduates, because in this world that is incredibly performative, the internet is very destructive right now for youth. You know, Australia has a ban for the internet under the age of 16, which personally I think is absolutely brilliant and very, very responsible for adults to watch out for childhood development. And so, you know, what I'm able to bring youth and who are highly anxious and enter any situation, always wondering how they will be perceived, essentially liked or not liked, or like, how's it going to go? Then they enter in already in a state of fight, flight, or freeze. Recently, I have been studying the polyvagal nerve and there's the polyvagal nerve theory. And it's called theory only because people are talking about it now, but it's based on the actual nerve that connects your mind, heart and gut, which all has neuron cells in there. And if we do not have a healthy polyvagal nerve response, if it has been somehow tweaked based on chronic stress or trauma, then we enter the world and everything is a threat. And we can, in an interview, forget our whole life story, or we can become incensed by a question and become very angry. You know, we're unable to just rest into the moment and be able to authentically connect. So that initially working with healthcare and then with that idea that people are looking for how to come back into balance and how to power attraction, It's really moved into anyone, anyone, anyone. I have people who, even thinking they're younger, younger children, just somewhat want to get into a group conversation. But right now, a ton of people, too, even in their 60s that are incapable of retiring, given the situation that's going on economically. So it's really anyone that's responding to their call to have a meaningful, better life and to not feel that they are responsible for everything. Rebecca Solnit, who's one of my favorite writers, once said that maybe being human, maybe the whole point of this is learning how to keep our balance amid surprises. Can we be better? Just like the animals or the crow that was making a loud sound earlier, they live in a constantly shifting ecosystem and they understand that their success and their viability is their ability to fit in their ecosystem. It's not about dominating their ecosystem. Everything has a gentle push and pull and there are necessary boundaries. And so a lot of the people who work with me, they go through a significant transformation of recognizing that we are animals. Our nervous systems are still back 2 million years ago. It is not moving as fast as AI and technology. So how do we come in and recognize our place? How do we fit? and then awaken our own superpowers, which have everything to do with authenticity and how, again, to move with a shifting and changing world that you don't have control of. It's very empowering.

Rexhen Doda:

Very empowering, truly. And when it comes to you finding the people that you serve, how do you go about connecting with potential clients? And this goes back to that marketing question. But yeah, feel free to share. you also shared with me earlier when it comes to building all your referral network.

Lori Wallace:

Yeah. I'm growing it organically, I would say, because I have my recruiting job as well. I can tell you that I have every belief, intuitive belief and intention that this will become my full time, but I'm allowing it to grow without having to overwhelm myself or the system. You know, I find sometimes when you do good work that you care about and you stay curious, but allow it to go slow, then you kind of put in a root structure, a tap root where along the way you are learning about the clientele, about their needs, how how they can best receive your information, they become almost part of your founding circle. So there's a shift and a change. So that's really been since day one, as I've been learning and listening. Here's a really interesting example that kind of feeds into that question is, you know, initially when Queer Ecology, which has these five activations and one of them is resume. Now there are resume writers absolutely everywhere. But what I have noticed is that resumes tend to be an artifact of the industrial age. They are extremely linear and they commoditize people. Everybody outsources them, which is very parallel to the concept of outsourcing your value and not really being tuned in to your unique genius as you fit into radical diversity. And I noticed this particular day I was working on a CEO search for a hospital. I brought nine very qualified CEO candidates. All of them had MBAs, most had JDs. And the board of directors came back to me after a day looking over the nine candidates and they were honest and they said, we can't really tell the difference between them. They're all wonderful, but we're struggling. And I said, oh, this is a problem. So I took them all back and developed a resume style that I call responsive resume. I used to call it feng shui resume. And it's where I make sure that the story is shaped, critical information is extracted, functional summaries are provided, everything that a recruiter and hiring manager needs to know up front without having to open up a browser tab or get their pencil out. It's all served up there. So that dynamic, that changed in the resume. And my next thought was, how do I scale this? I can only work on a handful of resumes a week. And I began the process of talking with various companies, including the number one largest resume scaling company in the world to see if they would take the template and if we could partner. And everyone said, no, they were just interested in whatever they had already programmed. So rather than taking that as a shut door or bad news or a rejection, I stepped back and as usual, I said, this is Intel. What does this mean? What direction is this moving me into? And again, this is going slow, right? This is like listening, learning, organically shifting. What I realized was, wait a minute, I want to empower people. Shouldn't I be testing whether or not Through my guidance, direct step-by-step guidance, as well as mentorship and things, shouldn't I guide them to do it on their own and see what they're capable of? And will they take it on or will they reject this idea? And I started to talk to people about it. And I said, will you try this? And they ate it up. It turns out they want to know their story. They want to own it. They don't want to feel disconnected. They want to learn how to be a writer, and they don't want to have to continually pay $300 to $500 each time it's time for an upgrade on their resume. That all came as a result of going slow, listening, and developing. But at the core of that was how can this scale and be there for everyone who needs it? Part of that decisioning too was how do I price this? Typically, career coaching, someone has to really have a budget of maybe $3,000 set aside. And I made the spiritual intellectual choice to make sure that my services and support is very much about empowerment again, was available to basically anybody who needed or wanted it. So that meant it was $385 or something like that for a resume, which is kind of typical, but adding onto that LinkedIn and adding onto that also cover letters. But the whole leather and body coach also under $400. So that's a decision. I remember talking with somebody who was scaling her business at the same time. And there's no, you know, like comparing to say, oh, this is better or worse. She was going towards the high income net worth who could pay for her time. My goal was to have as many people as possible touch this because I want to see as many people as possible empowered in the world. because again, I'm an activist. I was born in the middle of the 60s. So that has meant that it can't take over yet my full-on needs for income. Right now, it is still my passion work, but I know, but it is ready and it is established to scale. It is online with the weekly office hours and things like that, which was a big aha. I think a lot of coaches are doing the one-on-one and haven't made that leap to scaling. And I'm already there, but I'm taking my time because it needs to be proven and it needs to be something that people talk about and get excited about. So that's been part of my process.

Rexhen Doda:

And this goes to my other question, which is like, what are the goals that you are working towards for the next one to three years? And could it be that one of the goals is also for you to go full time on your coaching business and try to scale that?

Lori Wallace:

Yeah, I would love that because that's my love work. I think it really will happen. I am focused on that. I think the call is here as well as people. With the chaos of the world, this is 2025 when this podcast is being recorded, and world order is shifting politically and touching everything else. So the way to survive that is to come into one's own inner strength and in their story and their genius. So I do expect that. I am open, very much waiting for what that talk will be. For me, it only has to be a couple companies that decide to use queer ecology to outsource. And that replaces my standard income. Of course, a company would only use me if I'm capable of serving 500 people at once, which I am because I have already figured out scaling. So it'll come and it'll probably be more towards the end of this year or next year. I'm sensing that I'll have space or time or somebody will drop in that is interested in partnering in that way. But yeah, it's coming. I can feel it.

Rexhen Doda:

And when you say figured out scaling you mean that you can handle multiple clients because kind of like the program is it more of like group coaching versus one-on-one coaching?

Lori Wallace:

It's a little bit of both because what I realized is that Empowerment means that you really want people to go through, it's using the hero's journey, which you had mentioned during my introduction. The hero on the journey is thrust down to the dark woods. And the whole point of being lost in the woods is that you find your own personal resilience, that you start to look up, you start to learn about navigation, you understand about the North Star, maybe you understand about rushing rivers, how to take care of yourself, how to fight a dragon, you know, or whatever. So, you know, with something like that, I'm always then deeply considering how can I gift people an experience of discipline and personal responsibility so that they can scale that mountain and I'm the Sherpa right there with that chocolate bar and that compass. But they have to know they did it on their own and they have to know that they can fall, that they can scrape their knee, that they can get lost. but they can find their way out. So through that scaling then, that means that I pepper it really with online, very detailed, small step by step. It needs to really be handheld training with weekly calls. I have a weekly kind of office hour called the hero's journey call every Thursday at 1230. So every week you can come in and ask questions. Every week you're networking and meeting new people. The resume is attached to one-on-one editor and I'm developing a team of editors that people can choose on their own. And that helps other people now develop a business. So they did their resume through me. They want to be editors. So that's how that scales. But everything else is beautifully done online or through a group practice or a group training because then we break out into little smaller groups where always there's a chance to meet somebody new and to network. So it's beautiful how, it fits that way and that's the magic of it. So it's like kind of a combination of all of those things, not missing one element. You know, the straight online programs, you really have to have a client that it has a strong enough inner flame that they can do this like journey into the dark woods. They can find their way. And I find most people really want to have some support. And I think it's just kind of a better way to live too.

Rexhen Doda:

Thanks so much for sharing that. I think, A lot of people who are going to watch this and have been looking into scaling or maybe have not known how to structure and how to create a method around, like a structure around scaling that could also be similar to group coaching, but in a way it's also not just group coaching, it's more than that. They could also see your model and maybe could apply to their own coaching business as well. I also wanted to ask you is what resources in terms of investment, what resources or support has been most valuable for you in growing your coaching business?

Lori Wallace:

First of all, I'll say this is kind of a miracle. I've talked to people who have established their coaching or wanting to bring their expertise to the world, which I really honor. And I know of many people that have put a great deal of their personal money into it. And I have not done that. I have always funded it within my day job and made sure that it was not a significant. I was just like, I'm going to take it so that it feels like it's wrapped in, but it's not 20,000 investment this year or anything like that. That's why the pacing has been really, I can pay for it, I can go along. But the services that have allowed that to happen, because without WICs, Zoom, Calendly. I was using Vimeo. I'm not anymore. But, you know, for a while that was really helpful. Without these types of services, then I would not have been able to afford it. So, oh, Canva. You know, you have to, it's helpful if you have an interest and a love of creation. So my website is all designed by me. But let me tell you, it is not the first version that's been out there. My first one was very different and I was feeling into it and I was getting some feedback as well. And I remember the latest version that I have up. I just sat on my parents' couch when I was visiting them in Palm Desert one day and I just thought the download of some significant shifts and changes that would help people understand because queer ecology is so non-traditional. You know, it has so much of this like this breaking free, like coming out of the box and breaking free kind of thing that it really straddles personal development as well as career coaching and finding a job and getting going and get the practical. So it's like the practical and the poetic. How does one really explain that? I mean, it's getting easier because people are in the world today are starting to have these conversations about, you know, this higher consciousness way of living. So now it's a little easier to understand, but 2016, nobody was really kind of getting it, you know, really even into 2020 and say after 2020 or after COVID, it's been coming in there. So the good news is these kinds of things are affordable. And if you have a day job, you know, I talk about it lately is about portfolio careers, is that this idea of just having one job and putting all your eggs in that basket is not even the way of the natural world. It's not how ecosystems work. It's better that we're collaborating with chance and that we're always ready at any time to kind of adjust with whatever is shifting in that environment, how the weather is shifting or whatever. And I have decided that I want to do it at the same time with my day job. And then additionally, other jobs I have going on, which are events or being a board member. So I kind of always have three things and they feed each other. So they happen to be highly integrated. So that means that my nervous system, deep down, I feel safe to take this risk. And it doesn't have to be a massive financial risk, but it does mean that I'm devoted in for the long haul, that I'm going to take it slow and I'm going to stay devoted. And the roots are really, they're deep. The reputation is building, you know, and it's building on top of real work and outcomes.

Rexhen Doda:

Is there something that you wish you had known when you first started scaling your coaching business? Is there like an unexpected lesson learned?

Lori Wallace:

Yeah, I would say I wish that I knew this formula that I have now, which I kind of mentioned earlier, you know, that has my hero's journey call. It has my, even was overwhelming to people before. And I had a new grad from Vanderbilt who said, I'm overwhelmed and I need this to be in bite-sized pieces. I need you to tell me to change my name and phone number at the top and then tell me to go get an ice cream. And I was like, I get it. Oh my gosh, because we have temperaments all over. So I dramatically brought down and created steps that were two things, like put your number and your name, leave the screen, be done for today. And what I was doing is building resilience and things. Had I podcast like this, had somebody drawn in the message, I would have understood that from the beginning. I would have designed the scaling model. That would have helped me. I think I probably would have carved off 18 months of development, maybe even two years, because everything I've done was through trial and error and certainly listening to a lot of feedback. And I'm sure that there's still more feedback that will come through. I am the kind of person that I'm like, bring it. And everybody who works with me knows that I want them to tell me because they are my co-developers. That's how I find out, you know, what their needs are. So I'm very open to that and very appreciative.

Rexhen Doda:

Yeah. And another question I wanted to ask you is, You might have leaned on this already, but what are some of the biggest challenges you face in scaling your coaching business or are you still facing today?

Lori Wallace:

Yeah, just timing. It's just as much as I really want it to be my full-time work because I have chosen the lower price point. And for me, it was kind of a moral choice. That means then that I have to have a lot of volume in order to replace my recruiting business. That's a choice. And I still have decided not to go over to the higher price point, although I've been starting to think about maybe that's the piece that comes in that allows me then to be 100%. I haven't brought in that higher price point yet. That's still something else that I actually do need to sit down and carve out some space because that could be the next way. But it's really just comes down to that landscape. You know, you sell or you move based on what's going on in the environment around you. And we're all watching to see if we're about to drop into a recession. And that means a drop in recruitment. So, you know, does that mean that career ecology then is pushed to scale? You know, potentially. I mean, I'm going to watch now without any expectation of outcomes, without any grasping, about what the next six months are going to bring. And I'm going to be ready and I'm going to be curious. And maybe it means I sell my home again and go to another place that is even less expensive to live so that I can fully devote myself 100% and really take off on that. But I'm not sure. It's still very much of a tumultuous time in the world. So I'm to see. But it really just has to do with, if I had a husband, I'll put it this way. If he was a full-time working person, be scaled i'm just doing both you

Rexhen Doda:

know yeah

Lori Wallace:

i'm two incomes you know yeah

Rexhen Doda:

yeah and it goes back to that what you said about earlier is like organic shifting and balance like whatever brings uh next six months brings uh you're able to organically shift just like also the people that you coach um and I wanted to ask you this. It goes back to balance with this question. How do you handle the balance between delivering great client results and managing business growth on the other side? This is more of a technical question, but I wanted to ask how you approach it, thinking that you're also scaling, but you also have the On the other side, you have to balance as well.

Lori Wallace:

Yeah. As I listened to you ask that question, I think just at the heart of it too is just that part of if you scale, how can you provide that quality? Because you're stepping away from the one-on-one conversations a little bit. And I've been really kind of playing with that too and letting people show me and talk to me. And what I realized is that if I can create really... grounded and expansive and tantalizing community experiences. So when people come to my calls on Thursdays, for example, we start off with grounding our nervous system. And I even ask people to close their eyes and listen to the sounds outside. I mean, if I had done that at the beginning, we'd have that crow and I'd be like, whoa, you know, and I would have spent a whole bunch of time just marveling at that sound, you know. So there's this experience that is very holistic. And so I'm making sure that our time together is not surfacy, it's deep, even though it's collective. So that's something that I've been learning about. How can I make sure that whatever I'm bringing is holistic and deep and that people are served as a result of that? And then, you know, when the time comes that I'll have all these other editors, then what I explain to people and what I truly understand is that, you know, they can go ahead and sign up for me if I have space. But if they go with the other editors and they pick the one that they're drawn to, that's also collaborating with chance. That's where some of the mystery and magic is. Who knows if the person that is their editor, that person could also know somebody that they could refer their resume to. So everything has an element of play and magic in it. We have to go ahead and bring it. And I think really at this point in my life, Because I have a fully grown child who went through college, has a great job right now. Thank God he's very stable. So I'm lucky because I don't have a household of children and responsibilities that take a lot of that time. I'm able to really figure out how to devote, how to train up other people and give a lot to this right now. But if this was 10 years ago, I would still be having these thoughts, but I might even be taking it a whole lot slower because recruiting would still have to be number one to pay for my son's school and all of that. So we can really just understand that these gifts that we have to bring to the world, sometimes they birth in us and we dream about it for a couple of years and we're even waiting for potentially for children or a situation to shift a little bit. And that is a magical time of... of developing testing, having 10 people come through for free and saying to them that you want them to be really honest and you're just really watching. It's so important in the development cycle. I think we have a little bit here in the United States of you have to get something out and within the first year you have to be money successful. Success is really that you made a difference in someone's life and that they referred you to their friend and that they're better off now. you know there's success is really just about showing up authentically making a difference in the world and that's just really how i see it and i know that the abundance with it being able to be my full-time job will come when i bring to it that much devotion

Rexhen Doda:

yeah i also see it that way so success is not uh revenue is impact so the impact you can have on especially coaches do have a lot of impact on someone's life and they don't only impact that person's life they impact every person that is around that person so their family is their spouse and it has a dominant effect on their life another question I wanted to ask you especially because you are also thinking of scaling the future, is there any aspect of running your coaching business that would, quote unquote, figuratively keep you up at night? Any worries?

Lori Wallace:

I suppose it could be a great problem to have if, you know, in a week, a thousand people signed up. And, you know, I've seen people and, you know, they go out and maybe they're making a knit hat and they put it up on TikTok. And then within a week, you know, a thousand people buy it. And they run out of inventory. So I think there's always that, even look at it as a bad thing. I think what I have is I have enough people that I could support with whatever system that I have ready to go. And then I would say you're on the waiting list because this is something that is always valuable at any time. So I think we have to get out of that perfection mindset. but I am always preparing and ready. And I've got a handful of people that are ready to come on and do that editing. That's really kind of the only last piece I have to turn on is have those editors ready. It would be a great problem to have. And I would always be honest to say to people like, oh my gracious, this was a huge weight and a ton of people. Now, if it was a corporate client, then I have to be very responsible. If they gave me a thousand people that they were laying off, I have to sit down and say, am I ready for that? Like, can I hold that? And I'd be able to like right now without having that moment of considering that I don't. But I would be very honest because I don't want to say sure and then go in and let everybody down. So, you know, I might have to say I take a portion of that. Why don't you give me, you know, one of your offices or a particular section of it if I needed to. But, yeah, I'm pretty I'm pretty brave. Nothing scares me really yet. There could be something in the future. But I mean, even if the economy collapses and I have to sell my home and move to an apartment somewhere and be like, woo, this is a new adventure. You know, the ego is just like, I hate this. Where's the, you know, you were supposed to hold on to that great house or this or that. But the soul says, okay, it's time for adventure. We're on to some new experience. Embrace it.

Rexhen Doda:

Yeah, I really like that. Very strong mindset behind that as well. Is there any... advice would you give to, in this case, other career coaches who are looking to scale their impact?

Lori Wallace:

Yeah, my advice would be touch in always to the deeper calling and the meaning, because that's the taproot that's going to keep you pretty much steady and able to withstand changes, unexpected influence or effects, things that are happening around you that could impact your business. If you know that what you're doing is your service to the world, the question, I mean, here we are as coaches, we got to ask ourselves too, that question that we always guide others to. And my question to others is, how am I to be a service to the world? And when you ask that question, listen for the answer. And so whatever that is that keeps calling to you, as Michael Mead, one of my favorite podcasters, who's a podcaster in like mythology and things, he always says, the call keeps calling. So, you know, if you can hear your call, that's actually a very small percentage of humans. A lot of us, you know, are so overwhelmed in life that we haven't even tuned in like a radio to hear the call. We are simply trying to meet some external expectations or maybe even harsh ones that we have internalized from an external source and we're never good enough. So make sure as you are committing to this, that you will always be able to explain to yourself and others how this connects deeply to you and how you are in service to the world through this. And then you will remain loyal. You will continue to figure out how to move through any sort of up and down or potential left turn or failure, as one might call it, because the call keeps calling. And talk to others. Be open. Even if it shrinks down for a while, then you'll retool. You'll find your new way. And then it might just grow. So that's my, make sure you center in, that's your meaning.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you so much, Laurie. For anyone who wants to find you or connect with you, they can find you through LinkedIn at Laurie Wallace. And they can also find you at careerecology.com. Is there any other way they can connect with you?

Lori Wallace:

Every Tuesday. So tomorrow at 1230 Pacific Standard Time, I have open session. And we will have a moment again of centering into our nervous systems. And then we will talk about these times. We'll talk about work. We'll talk about authentic relating. And anybody can share what they're dealing with. They can vent. They can laugh. They can meet somebody new. So it's an hour, 1230 to 130, open session every Tuesday. So that's another way to come in and say hi.

Rexhen Doda:

Thank you so much, Lori. It was a pleasure having you on the podcast.

Lori Wallace:

Thank you so much. It was so good to be here and good luck to you. That's it

Davis Nguyen:

for this episode of Career Coaching Secrets. If you enjoyed this conversation, you can subscribe on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to this episode to catch future episodes. This podcast was brought to you by Purple Circle, where we help career coaches scale their business to $100,000 years, $100,000 months, or even $100,000 weeks, all without burning out and making sure that you're making the impact and having the life that you want. To learn more about our community and how we can help you visit joinpurplecircle.com.