What if the rules you’ve been following your whole life, aren’t actually serving you?
In this episode I’m joined by speaker, business therapist, and author Lauren Wittenberg Weiner, whose new book Unruly: Deconstruct the Rules, Defy the Norms, and Define Your Success challenges us to deconstruct the rules, defy the norms, and define success on our own terms.
Lauren’s story is as compelling as it is surprising. A former federal employee who worked in the White House rulemaking office, she went on to found and scale a government contracting firm to over $100 million in annual revenue, by questioning the very systems she once operated within.
Lauren also opens up about navigating life after selling her company, writing her book during an intensely personal season, and what surprised her most about the publishing process.
If you’ve ever felt boxed in by expectations, whether in your career, your family life, or even your own ambition, this episode will invite you to pause, look around, and ask: Are these rules still serving me?
Learn more about Lauren:
- Instagram @laurenwittenbergweiner
Book recommendation:
- Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success, Adam Grant
- Likeable Badass: How Women Get the Success They Deserve, by Alison Fragale
Follow me on:
- Instagram @stacyennis
- Facebook @stacyenniscreative
- YouTube @stacyennisauthor
To submit a question, email hello@stacyennis.com or visit stacyennis.com/contact and fill out the form on the page.
How to rethink the rules that define your success | Episode 240
These transcripts were generated by robots, not writers.
Stacy: Welcome. Welcome. If you are a rule follower, you really need to listen to this episode because I hope that by the end of today’s episode, you’re going to be looking around at your life and maybe questioning some things or looking at things a little bit differently. I know one of my, I would say, challenges as a kid growing up is I really didn’t like rules. And that meant that I nearly failed high school and eventually kind of learned how to operate in the world of rules, but to write my own. And this week’s guest I think is a really great example of living by your own rules.
Stacy: Lauren Wittenberg Weiner is a speaker, business therapist and author of Unruly Deconstruct the rules, defy the norms and define your success. A barrier breaking entrepreneur, Lauren is a former federal employee and government contracting executive who founded WWC Global and grew it to 100 million plus in annual revenue and more than 300 employees before it was sold in 2022. Lauren, welcome.
Lauren: Thank you so much Stacey for having me. I am so excited for the podcast today.
Stacy: Me too. I can’t wait to dig into your story because it’s a juicy one and I think it’s really interesting when you hear the title of your book is Unruly. And then we learned that you worked in the government, which is not what you think about when you think about an environment that is open to your you setting your own rules. So can you give us a little bit of your background so that our listeners know who you are and why they should be listening to you today?
Lauren: Yeah. Yeah. So actually not only did I work in the White House, I worked in or in the government. I worked in the White House rulemaking office. Okay, so.
Stacy: Okay, that’s even better.
Lauren: Office that reviews and rewrites all of the rules across the federal government.
Stacy: I love that.
Lauren: Which is awesome. And. And look, I was a rule follower growing up. I didn’t like the rules necessarily, but the rules were predictable. They gave me. I knew that if I just put my head down and did exactly what I was supposed to do, I’d get really predictable and really positive results. Right. So I was the A plus student who would always go above and beyond. I was. You know, I went to the college that my entire family went to, University of Michigan. Go Blue. And that was where I was supposed to go. And I didn’t ever question that. And then I went on for a PhD at an Ivy League school. And the first time I ever questioned the rules or the expectations that.
Lauren: That were kind of set for me was when I came out of graduate school, had some postdoc offers that were great postdoc offers, and sat down and said, I don’t think I want to do this with my life. And everyone was like, what are you doing? Like, this is. You’ve made it like you. You’re able to do it. How would you turn that down? And again, I ended up in the White House. So, you know, I didn’t. I didn’t take a detour. That was a bad detour. It was just a really big detour from what I had been planning. Loved my job at the White House. Absolutely loved it. And then found myself. I met my now husband, and he was working for the military.
Lauren: He’d been in the military before and was working as a civilian for the military and got military orders to Naples, Italy. So I quit my job in the White House. We put the house that we had just bought up for rent. We had four days to get married, which was actually the best thing in the world because I didn’t have that much time to stress out about it. And then we moved overseas. I was 30 years old. And I’d never done anything like this before. Right. Like, totally, like, upended my life. And I got there, and we found out that they had what they said was a policy on the base or rules on the base that military spouses couldn’t get professional level jobs. We could have a certain level job.
Lauren: And really what I was told is only until I could be a secretary, only until I got pregnant and had babies. And this was 2004, 2005. Right. Right. So I didn’t do well with that. And so, honestly, I started the firm not with the end in mind that were going to build this big firm, which is why I call myself an accidental entrepreneur. It was literally just to get work for me with my agencies back in the States. There were some things going on in D.C. that somebody wanted me to come in and do some. Some consulting. So I incorporated the. Actually, my. A friend of mine who was a lawyer incorporated the shell of the company just to keep me safe, do the right thing, you know, make sure that I was protected.
Lauren: And instead somebody turned to me and said, hey, you’re smart. Can I get you to do some analysis for me? And it was in anti terrorism force protection. And I was like, I don’t know what that is. I have no idea. Right. I had been doing education policy. I had been doing health care and, you know, food nutrition. And then this is like guns, guards and gates, right? This is like real, no kidding, military stuff. And I was like, I’ll do whatever you want. Just get me out of the house. And by the time we got the contract in place, they wanted an extra halftime person. So the woman who had helped incorporate my. The firm became kind of employee number one and a half. And then maybe two weeks later, somebody said, hey, I need one of you. Can I have another one?
Lauren: If you want a smart military spouse, there’s plenty of us on the base. So we hired a Harvard trained lawyer, and then we hired the budget director for the state of Hawaii who had moved overseas. So it was the first, probably two years. Stacey. Honestly, all we did was catch up. It was like, can you do this? Yep. Can you do this? Yep. So were probably 15, 20 people in the first two years.
Stacy: Amazing.
Lauren: Just by saying yes. And then we got more strategic and then we got bigger and grew and thoughtful about it. But those first two years, it was just like, sure, we could do that. Sure we can do that. No problem.
Stacy: I love that. I love also this idea of having all these incredibly intelligent women in this space that are like, itching to do something. And fun connection on my side. One of my very first books that I ever worked on. So this was like 16 years ago, probably, or maybe like 14, was by a military wife for military wives, so. And it was like, really interesting.
Lauren: I’m sure. I know the book. That’s hilarious. Y. Small world.
Stacy: I learned a lot about, like, the culture there. I love your story and I, you know, I know today we’re going to be talking a lot about rules. And I know when you talk about rules, it’s not so much about, like, breaking all the Rules, Never. When I mentioned my. My story about, you know, being. Having a hard time with the rules growing up, nearly failing high school, once I realized how to work within the rules but kind of manipulate the system a little bit, that’s when everything started working for me. And also just kind of taking more personal responsibility for how I shape my own journey within the rules that I have to live within.
Stacy: And then that was what propelled me to, you know, go, not graduate high school early, go on to graduate with my bachelor’s and my master’s, my highest honors. You know, those were all things that wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t had. Well, it’s not that I didn’t ask for exceptions. It’s not that I didn’t go in and chart my own path. And in fact, a lot of my graduate program I designed myself because the program they created for me wasn’t serving the future that I wanted. So I had a lot of meetings going, you know, can I swap this for that? And here’s why. And let me show you the application. And, you know, it’s like figuring out how to work within the system, because you kind of have to sometimes.
Stacy: So I would love for you to share maybe a story from your book or from your own life that will put this into perspective for our listeners. And probably we have both sides listening to this right now, like the. The ultra mega rule followers that don’t question it at all and just adhere to it. And then the others that are like, what rules? I don’t listen to no rules. So maybe share a story for us of what it looks like in practice to not necessarily break all the rules, but make them work for you.
Lauren: Yeah. And let me set up a little bit before I get into the story, just kind of the concept of the book, just a little bit. It’s in three parts. It’s know the rules, challenge the rules, and change the rules. And so first, knowing the rules better than anyone else. And that’s where my. My rule following kind of came in. But I think anyone can do it. You just. It’s a lot of work, right? You got to go in. And I’m not just talking about the written rules. Right. There are legal kind of requirements. Those are really important. Those have very clear kind of requirements, but also punishments or. Or positive kind of reinforcement if you follow them. But there’s also this unwritten rule concept, right? The expectations, the way the game gets played.
Lauren: And that, I think is as important, if not more important in a lot of ways to getting to success. Because people will turn around and be like, no, no, that’s not how you do things. And it’s not breaking the actual written rules, but breaking the expectations. And that’s okay, you can do that. But you have to understand who’s enforcing those expectations, those guidelines, what the implications of not following them are and how you’re going to get around those. And that gets into that challenge, the rules piece of it, where it’s okay, now that you know the rules, where is there space within the rules to find my own distinct path, my own authentic path. And then the third piece of the book is really getting into advocacy, changing the rules, or helping other people to find their own path within the rules.
Lauren: So, so one of the first stories that kind of got us to this unruly success that I, that we found within the firm was when I first started hiring military spouses, a bunch of people, first of all, a bunch of people told me, you can’t hire military spouses. They’re not good enough, right? They’re not, they’re not professional, they’re not smart enough. They, they move too often. And I knew those to be totally false, right? That, that I could dismiss out of hand. I knew how good they were and I knew that other people weren’t seeing that. So that was kind of my authentic space to move into that nobody else had tapped into. But they, I also heard it’s against the actual written rules. And that was the Status of Forces Agreement, right?
Lauren: And that’s a big deal to violate because it’s an actual international agreement. So this isn’t even just US law, it is international law. So, but I went back to this, the sofa, the Status of Forces Agreement. And I read it in English. I didn’t try to read it in Italian, right? But I, I was able to look at it and there was nothing in there that said military spouses couldn’t work. There was also nothing in there that said it could, that they could. So I went down to the next layer of rules and guidance and policy documentation and all that kind of stuff. And at each layer, there was nothing that said we couldn’t do this, but there was nothing that said we could.
Lauren: The only thing that stopped us from doing it was literally a form that you had to fill out to get the visa. And the way they had designed the form, nobody had conceived of the idea that military spouses would need a visa for anything but non professional jobs. And so you were allowed to get a job as a bagger. At the commissary, right. You were allowed to get a job as a childcare worker, but you were not there. There was no, it wasn’t that you weren’t allowed to. There was no conception that military spouses could work as contractors on base, for example. And so there was a. There was a checkbox that said, I’m a contractor coming overseas, coming from overseas from the US To Italy, but not the other way around.
Lauren: So I changed the form and I handed it to them with this whole memo of. Here’s how we’ve documented that you can do this. It doesn’t require any changes to any of the rules. It just requires this change to the form which I’ve taken the liberty of making for you. And it looks much better. And it’s a fillable form, so you can put it online and you know, here you go, you’re welcome. And they did it, and were allowed to do it, but everyone kept saying, you know, you weren’t allowed to do that. So were able to kind of find that space within the rules without even having to change the rules. And we did that over and over again. And that’s what.
Lauren: That’s how we found our own blue ocean, that ability to not be competing against other people because we had our own space within the market.
Stacy: I love that example. And the fact that you did that. Amazing. I wonder if you could maybe bring this to a more everyday experience for our listeners, because not everybody is going to be in that type of a situation. Right. So. So could you give maybe an example of how this can show up in the everyday life of, you know, somebody in the U.S. for example?
Lauren: Yeah. So I’ll give you an example that’s more recent and that was after, which is a little bit more about the. The unwritten rules, not the. The written rules. After the book came out and I made the bestseller list, which was the goal that we had set for the book, which was amazing. You were in the middle of it and it was. It was rough, like it was. There was a lot going on with the book launch and all that kind of stuff. And in the middle of all of this, my mom was actively dying. We knew that it was coming at some point. She had Alzheimer’s for well over a decade at this point. But literally the day of the book launch party, she stopped eating. And we knew that the end was coming at some point soon.
Lauren: There’s funny story later that I tell in an article that just released, but about her popping up, being unruly and starting to eat again for a little while. But we’re so. We’re in the middle of all of this. I hit the bestseller list, my mom’s laying dying, I’m running around the country, and my editor, who’s amazing, says to me, okay, now that you’ve made the bestseller list, here’s the next thing you have to do, and you have to do it. You have to make, I think it was 10,000 copies by the end of the year or you’re never going to get another book deal. And I, cece, I started spinning and I was like, okay, so this is the rule, and we have to do this, and we have to.
Lauren: And I literally stopped myself in the middle of this kind of spiral of panic and said, wait a second, I don’t care. I don’t. I don’t have to do this. Not because I don’t want to climb this mountain, not because I don’t want to get the next book deal, not because I don’t want to, you know, whatever it was that she was saying I needed to do, but it was. I don’t, I don’t have to follow this rule or this expectation because I don’t. I don’t necessarily want what we need to do. And even if I don’t have the bandwidth to do it. So I talk a lot in the book about ruthlessly curating your priorities, and this one couldn’t have been a. Even if I wanted it to be a priority at that point, my mom had to be a bigger priority.
Stacy: Absolutely. So, yeah, I mean, what a. I’m sorry that you went through that. That sounds so difficult. And I’m so glad that you were able to have that framework, you know, in that moment. I mean, you literally just wrote the book on this. So to be able to bring in your own wisdom into that moment I think is so powerful. And, you know, there’s so many examples of this, I think in everyday life. I can even think about somebody who’s a stay at home parent and feels like they have all these obligations that they must do for the school, for, you know, their community and all these things. And, you know, it’s funny because my husband the other night, I always make Christmas presents for all my kids, teachers, and they’re. I had to make 20 this year and I actually really enjoy it.
Stacy: But you wouldn’t know it because I’m really stressed when I’m like, doing it. And my husband was like, why do you do this? Do you know, you could just. We could just contribute money to the class gift. And I was like, no, I like this. You know, like, I like doing this.
Lauren: Like you like this. I know.
Stacy: I got. Yeah, totally. But then I was, like, kind of thinking about it later. I really. The reason I like to do it is my kids get so much joy handing out individual gifts to all of their teachers. And so that’s what I’m doing it for. But then it did kind of get me thinking, like, how many of these things do I do every holiday season? Or. Because we’re recording this, it’s not going to come out till next year, but we’re recording this in December or in the summertime or in different seasons and periods and different roles that I play in my life where I feel like there’s this certain written or unwritten rule that I have to stick to. And the truth is that a lot of the time you actually don’t. And nobody will notice. Right.
Stacy: And you can prioritize your own needs and your own self.
Lauren: Yep. It’s funny, I tell a story in the book, and also almost every time I talk, particularly about work, life, equilibrium, which is when my kids were little. They’re teenagers now, Right. But when they were little, they always had this. What do they call it? Spirit weeks. Right. Where the kids had to go in and dress up and each day was a different theme and whatever. And this was my, like, you can’t get me into a craft store to save my life. I will literally break out in hives when I have to go into one. I hate everything to do with this kind of stuff. It just who I am. So I would hate and dread these spirit weeks every time. And other moms would live for these things, right? They would plan for it for six months.
Lauren: They would ask the teacher what the spirit week next year was going to be so they could work through this stuff. Right. And either of those options is okay. However. And this is what I had to learn back in the day. I couldn’t then, like, I. I could ruthlessly curate what my priorities were that was definitely never going to be a priority. But then I had to own that choice. And that was the thing I think I. I missed in early days because I would sit there and go, I’d see these Instagram or Facebook posts with the kids in these adorable costumes, and my kid on cowboy day would have a baseball hat because I was like, well, it’s close enough, right? And. And I had to. My kids are fine. They don’t notice.
Stacy: They didn’t.
Lauren: They don’t remember. Right. They’re, I’m sure they’re mad at me for something because they’re teenagers, but it’s not that. But I had to own the fact that this was something I was okay not doing and that it was still great that somebody else chose to do it. And so being able to own the choices that you’re making, and again, even if you don’t want to make that choice because you want that to be a priority, but you can’t because there’s other priorities that are higher still own the fact that was the choice you had to make.
Stacy: Yeah, I think that’s a really nice point because ultimately not always, but many choices you make do have consequences in some way, whether small or large. I think that’s a really nice point. You know, another thing I was thinking about as you shared your story, and this is something that I kind of reflect on from my early entrepreneurial journey when I would hear really successful women share about their lives. And, and I think about this in my own life too. You know, I did all of the once I figured out how to work within the rules and how to be successful, I did all the things until I got to like a success point that I could have a lot more freedom of choice.
Stacy: And I guess my question is, how much of your early ultra rule following do you think set you up for success to be able to have this posture that you have now and you know, for somebody, maybe that’s a little bit earlier. I know our listener base is usually a little older further along in their careers, but certainly we have listeners that are earlier, much earlier in their careers and they’re in that phase where they’re like putting in the time, you know, how do you think about that? Because arguably some of your rule following was, is why you’re here, you know.
Lauren: Yes and no. I mean, look, I have a PhD from an Ivy League school. It opens doors.
Stacy: Yes.
Lauren: That I think would not as easily be opened. Right. It gives me credibility that I don’t necessarily think would happen without it.
Stacy: Yeah.
Lauren: That said, I’m in the middle of college stuff with my 17 year old. Right. So we are. She’s a junior, so. So next year is when we’re going to be really in the thick of it. But we’re starting and I realize how many of the expectations, how many of the obligations that it seems to be kind of in the space now are just killing our kids and are killing the young people who are because the expectations have gotten higher and higher. And more and more. And I don’t think that we are driving toward the right outcomes. I don’t think that we are driving toward long term what’s going to look like success by driving to all of these very high expectations that are totally over the top and totally unsustainable. Right.
Lauren: I mean these kids and young people in there, I’ve got nieces and nephews who are in their 20s and early 30s and that the drive towards success I think is unsustainable. It’s. It just. You can’t possibly do it. And I think honestly the vast majority of the success that we got to was really mostly because were willing to upend the system, not because I had done so well in the early days. Right. It was to be able to question and have confidence enough to question. You tell me that I have to do this, but do I really? Right. Because I heard over and over again in the building of the company, you’re doing it wrong, you’re stupid, you’re crazy, you’re wrong, you’re whatever. And it was only in being comfortable enough.
Lauren: And maybe that came somewhat from some of the achievements that I had done early, but I don’t think so. I think it was really just getting comfortable with my own self and my own way of doing things. I don’t think you have to achieve. You know, I don’t think an Ivy League school is the end all, be all.
Stacy: Yeah.
Lauren: And I am telling my kids that over and over again because I don’t think what you have to do to get there. I was just talking to someone who’s a good friend of mine. She’s a professor at Dartmouth where we both went to school. And she’s doing consulting for kids who are trying to get into the IVs. And her main role is to get them two to three peer reviewed published journal articles before their senior year of high school. I didn’t have my first peer reviewed journal article until I was in my mid-20s.
Stacy: Wow.
Lauren: Right. And I have a Ph.D. from an Ivy League school.
Stacy: That is nuts. Like, I mean, honestly, like, that’s like a 17 year old writing. Yeah, it’s interesting because, you know, obviously I’m American, but we’ve been living abroad for. Well, I mean we lived in a couple of countries before we moved with our. So before we had kids. But we lived in Thailand before this for about a year and then we’ve been here in Portugal for six years and so my kids have lived outside of the U.S. longer than they’ve lived inside of the U.S. and yeah, it’s been interesting because now my daughter is about to turn 13, so she’s kind of edging up on college years just enough that we’re starting to kind of pay attention and think about it. And even though I was like a big academic achiever, my husband and I both have master’s degrees. We value.
Stacy: My husband was a teacher before he stayed home. Like, we value it a lot. I’ve been surprised as I learn more and read more of the research on learning and success, that all these standard. When you hold kids to these super aggressive standards and basically drain the life out of them so they have burnout when they’re like 22 years old, that doesn’t actually lead to a happy life. And so what’s cool though, because of the culture we’re in, it’s been kind of an interesting experience because like many places there’s like two wildly different paths that you can send your kids through. There’s the British system that’s actually like people think is way better than the US but is, I think way worse as far as testing rigidity. It’s not advanced with learning.
Stacy: And then there’s the like the hippie dippy path, which is like your student led learning, which is more of the path that we’ve taken actually. But then this year my daughter’s in a Portuguese school so she can get the language she’s been last year and then this year, and then we’ll move her out after that when she’s fluent. And yeah, it’s just been an interesting process because I was raised in a really like, academic pathway and then to come in and look at it as a parent and like all you really want your kids to be as happy and like be able to support themselves, you know, and like be autonomous. And it’s, you know, work overwork and depletion is not the pathway for that.
Lauren: No. You know, it’s funny, I see a bunch of my friends and I’m a middle aged woman, right? I’m 51 years old and I see so many of my friends who have followed the rules forever, right? They did the college, the graduate school, whatever that graduate school looks like, and they were set on that path and they’ve done everything right and they’ve worked and they’ve busted and they’ve gotten to wherever they were supposed to get to, right? Partner at a law firm or at a consulting firm or, you know, whatever it is. In this standard path that they had set themselves onto. And now at my age, they’re turning around and going, is this it? This is not what you promised me. This isn’t working and I can’t do this anymore. And so I think some of us got off that track earlier. Right?
Lauren: I, although I still busted and I still worked my tail off to get where I was, but at each turn I kind of like, I, you know, like the book says I got unruly. I was like, yeah, this is not what I want to do. You’re, you’re telling me I have to do something. I’m not going to do that. But I think most of my friends now are to the point where they’re like, yeah, this isn’t what you promised me. Right. My Ivy League pedigreed background didn’t get me the ease and the, you know, I mean, status, whatever. They’ve got all of that and it’s not what they thought it was going to be.
Lauren: So I think as I’m raising the younger generation, I’m looking maybe less at achievement maybe, you know, and don’t get me wrong, I just fought with my son for midterms and making sure that he was studying for them. I don’t want them failing out of school, but I do you want to look at a balance that is different than what we had when I was growing up.
Stacy: Yeah, yeah. And it’s hard to. You don’t have a clear cut path for that, which I think makes it a little bit trickier. You know, the other thing I was thinking as you were talking is there is also like another angle to this which is somebody who’s maybe had not rules around like following an Ivy League path, but maybe they’ve had rules that have told them they can’t do things. You know.
Lauren: Yes. Stacy:
Right. Messaging or racism or you know, other things that have spoken into their life in a way that’s really held them back. And maybe there’s another side to this as well. For those folks who agree, you know, they’re like, forget that. Like, I am going to write my own. Actually, I’m breaking these rules and I’m going to rewrite them for myself because I believe in my worth. I believe in myself. You know, I see there’s a really wide application, but maybe there’s like a little tweak, I don’t know, to the messaging there.
Lauren: I, I often say that the four words that fueled more of my success than any others are. Oh, really? Watch Me and. Right. I mean, when somebody tells you can’t do something, sometimes, I mean, a lot of people will shut down. But if you can turn that into fuel for proving them wrong instead of. And believing in yourself, if you can do that, I think that’s what drives a lot of that success, because there are expectations there, and I don’t care where those expectations are coming from. You’ve got to be the one to turn around and say, you don’t define me. You don’t get to say that. And so even if it’s your parents, even if it’s, you know, your boss, even if it’s your spouse, it’s just, no, no. This is not. This is not the path I want now.
Lauren: And it might have been the path I was on before, but I’ve chosen a different path now, and I get to pivot.
Stacy: Yeah, I love that. I’m glad we touched on that. Let’s shift gears a little, because I’d love to ask you about your writing process. Of course, A lot of people that listen to this podcast are authors or they’re published or they’re aspiring authors, I should say. Or maybe they’re working on book two, Book three. I’d love to hear a little bit about your writing process and maybe anything that challenged you along the way. And just for context for our listeners, we did not work together because I do have a lot of my clients on here, so we get a little bit of a different look into your journey.
Lauren: Right. So I started writing honestly just to get stuff out of my head. It’s just a therapy for me, you know, because I had sold the company. I am now working for a new CEO, not as the CEO for the company.
Stacy: I bet that was weird.
Lauren: It was.
Stacy: Yeah.
Lauren: It was bizarre. And I, you know, made a conscious decision that I had to step back and not be. Not insert myself. And so I literally would sit on my hands oftentimes to remind myself to shush in. It was awful. Yeah. I mean, I was like, okay, don’t talk, don’t talk. And I would, you know, text the CEO on the side and say, hey, I’ve got some thoughts about this later, or whatever, if you want to hear them. And sometimes he did, and sometimes he didn’t, and that’s fine. He was the new leader. Mm. But I needed to get this stuff out of my head, because it was there, and it was driving me crazy, and I was. It was gonna come out of my mouth if I didn’t get it down on paper. So I honestly didn’t start this as a book.
Lauren: I just. I just started it as therapy. And there was kind of a seminal moment right after we sold. My. My cousin actually had glioblastoma, which is a brain cancer, and it came back five days after we sold. So I went through that with him, and when he passed, it stopped me, and I said, okay, I want to actually turn this into something. We don’t have as much time as we all think we do. I’ve always wanted to actually publish a book. Maybe this is the time. So I got a book called I think it was the Business of Being a Writer, because this is what I do, right? I research.
Stacy: So I was like, I can figure this out. Jane Friedman’s book.
Lauren: Yeah, I think so.
Stacy: She’s coming. She’s, by the way, coming back on the podcast soon. She’s been on my podcast before, but she’s coming back in the new year, so that’s fun. I love that you shouted her out.
Lauren: That’s awesome. Yeah. For me, I pulled it together. I was like, okay, I need to do a book proposal. And I put one together in, like, no kidding, two days, which was not good. It was not useful. And I sent it out to, I don’t know, 10 agents. And one of them actually got back to me and said, don’t sign with anyone until I get a chance to read this. I’m really intrigued. I was like, okay, this is gonna happen. And then she ghosted me, and I was like, all right. I clearly don’t know what I’m doing. The book. While it is useful to read a book, certainly I’m never gonna say that as an author, that it’s not useful to read a book. I need more than this.
Lauren: And a friend of mine put me in touch with her developmental editor, who guided me through this whole process. She was what I’d call a Sherpa. Through this process, she packed along with me and did all of the guidance, which was amazing. So we put together a book proposal that was very different. Long story short, the agent that I had gone to that had ghosted me, went back to our. She strung us along for a while and then ghosted me again. So I got mad. Oh, really? Watch me. Right? And my editor, I was like, you know what? Do I really need an agent? And she was like, you don’t. But okay. Yeah, sure. You could do this. So went to a great imprint that did not require agented authors, and within two days, I had a book deal.
Stacy: Wow.
Lauren: And which was amazing. And then he wanted the manuscript in four months. And I was like, okay, we got this. So went through and we had the outline and we had a couple of chapters partially done, but went through and had a sk. I’m, I am very good with the schedule. So we had a full blown schedule. It was like chapter one and chapter two need to be written the first week so I could give it over to Nancy. She started reviewing while I started the next chapter. And we had this whole rolling schedule of writing, reviewing, rewriting, reviewing and we had the book in Matt’s hands in just under four months. It was so much fun.
Lauren: I, you know, when I first thought that I was going to do this, I called one of my mentors who ended up writing the forward to the book, Stan McChrystal, who is a retired four star general. And I said, sir, I think I might have a book in me. And he was like. I was like, am I crazy? He’s like, oh, you’re definitely crazy. We know that. But yes, you have a book in you. And he said, you’re going to love every minute of writing the book and you’re going to hate every minute of publicizing the book. And he was right. So I loved, I don’t care how many edits we had. I loved all of it. The publicizing of the book has been less authentic to me and less comfortable for me. It is learning rules that I do.
Lauren: Not that it’s all the social media algorithms and the. And it just wasn’t. I’d been on social media. I love social media for what it does, but when it became a business, it just wasn’t comfortable to me. So that’s been a huge struggle. But getting in front of people, having these conversations, right? Doing the talks that I get to do in front of 20 people or in front of 2,000 people, that’s amazing. And I get so much energy out of that. But again, the kind of business of selling the books was the part that I think was the hardest for me.
Stacy: Yeah, I can understand that. There’s a very different energy that you bring to both of those. And we have had a lot of great guests on this topic. For anybody that’s listening and in that stage to talk about book marketing, we recently had a PR strategist on. So we’ll also link to that episode in the show notes. So for. For our listeners that are like, I get you, Lauren. I’m in the same boat. Lauren. I’ve really loved our conversation and I know somebody listening Today is like something has shifted in them. So I’m really excited for that listener. I’d love for you to share one more thing with us, which is the question that I ask every single guest that comes on the podcast and that is if you could recommend one book to listeners.
Stacy: So this is one that has profoundly changed your life in some way. What would that book be and why?
Lauren: So I talk a lot about one book in unruly. That really shifted my perspective or at least gave me comfort in my perspective. From a science perspective, which is Adam Grant’s give and take. I have been a giver my whole life. That is just who I am, how I’m kind of built. And I thought it made me a sucker, right? I didn’t, I wasn’t going to stop doing it. But particularly in business, giving without getting seemed like the wrong thing to do. It always was what I did. And it, I knew it worked well in a lot of places because it bought me trust, it bought me real honest, non transactional relationships. But I didn’t have the words and I didn’t have the science to kind of back myself on that. Lauren:
And when I read Adam’s book, I was like, okay, I’m not a sucker. This is actually science based. I’m, I’m better for this. So, so his book is probably one of. I will shout out Allison Fragale and her likable badass as well because that has changed again, my thinking. The way that I’ve done things, I think fits into her model. But the science behind it is amazing. And so I’m a PhD psychologist, so I like the science behind it. And so that gave me comfort, both of those books that the way that I approach the world is the right way to do it. And they gave me a lot of new nuances of how to do that.
Stacy: Both of those books sound amazing and hopefully some of our listeners and viewers today have added that to their list. I am going to add it to mine. I’d love for you to share where our viewers, our listeners can find your book and learn more about you. Where should they follow you? Give us all the details so that they can connect with you.
Lauren: Thank you. Because I will always forget that because again, social media is not my comfort zone. I am on LinkedIn first and foremost and I post a whole lot of kind of thought leadership as whatever you want to call it there. Instagram, Facebook for sure. I have a website, Lauren Wittenbergweiner.com that has a newsletter it’s once a month, so it’s not spamming you. And again, it’s just longer form content of kind of the thoughts that I have around work and life and all the things unruly. You can get the book pretty much anywhere. I mean, it is in the bookstores, which is the coolest thing in the world to walk into a bookstore, love it and see it there, particularly when I haven’t called ahead to check if it’s there.
Lauren: And it’s on Amazon and all of the independent bookstores you can get, you can go through whichever is your preference to get it. I know it is on sale right now on Amazon, so I don’t know if people like Amazon, but if they do, you can get it for pretty inexpensive comparatively to what the list price is. So. And yeah, I, please, I. It’s been a great, amazing experience, but I would love to get this in the hand of as many people as possible because I do think it really helps kind of clarify where you might be able to push on the things that are really holding you back.
Stacy: Well, thank you, Lauren. I really appreciate your time and for sharing with us today. Lauren:
Thank you so much, Stacey, for having me.
Stacy: And thank you to you, our listener and viewer, if you’re still here, you must have really loved this episode. So I hope that you take what you learned today and apply it into your life. And do be sure that you are either subscribed on YouTube or that you’re following me on your podcast platform so you don’t miss other great episodes like this. And if you have a moment to rate and review the podcast, it makes a huge difference in helping me reach more listeners with the message of living a life that’s not just better, but beyond better. And of course, I have to thank Rita Dominguez for her production of this podcast because as I tell you every week, this would make you would not be watching this or listening to this without her. She is truly like all I do is record.
Stacy: She does everything else. And I am so grateful. And I will be back with you before you know it.
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