THE WEEKLY

Hey, it's Laura and Jason.

You didn't just subscribe to a newsletter. You watched something come to life. Welcome to what it became... The Weekly UNLOK #1.

In this week's issue:

How this partnership started
Who Jason is and what 25 years of building taught him
What we believe together that neither of us could prove alone

P.S. In case you missed it, the Peak of the Week is now The Weekly UNLOK.

THE WEEKLY UNLOK #1

THE VERSION OF THIS STORY I DIDN'T EXPECT TO TELL

I thought I knew what I was building.

Twenty years of executive recruiting. More than 30,000 conversations with people on their way in or out of organizations. And somewhere in all of that, a pattern so consistent I wrote a book about it.

The book launched. Purpose workshops helping individuals see what they couldn't see. Leaders reaching out for career alignment coaching and then executive coaching. And I thought... this is it. This is the business. A coaching practice built on everything I'd seen as a recruiter working with hundreds of organizations for two decades.

I thought I was building a lifestyle coaching business. What I was actually doing was collecting evidence for something I couldn't yet name.

Then Jason attended one of my purpose workshops. And four hours after it ended, I sent him a text message.

WHAT I SAID

“What if we worked together?”

That’s what I wrote. Actually, it was a voice memo. I love sending voice memos. And I want to tell you what I saw in Jason that made me send it… because it’s the same thing I’ve seen in 30,000 career conversations, and I’ve learned not to ignore it.

He had spent nearly three decades building environments where people surprised everyone, including themselves. He did this on repeat, inside one company for 25 years… and he thought that was normal.

WHAT? No, Jason, that isn’t normal. But he didn’t know that yet. You’ve probably felt the difference in your own work. An environment where you brought everything you've got (and you thrived!) and one where you quietly stopped trying. Most people can tell you exactly when the shift happened. They just haven’t been asked.

What I saw was a man who had played a lead role in building something extraordinary, and hadn’t yet understood what the extraordinary thing was. It wasn’t the $190 million company. It wasn’t the 300 employees or the 14 acquisitions. It was the CONDITIONS. The invisible architecture of belonging, authority, and mastery that he had helped build, almost by instinct, inside those walls.

And I thought... I’ve been describing the wreckage of when that architecture is missing for 20 years. This man has been building it from the inside for 25.

He’d also lost the leader he had built everything alongside. His boss and mentor of 25 years, Jennifer, died in December 2022. That loss cracked him open.

He’d had his breakdown. I’d had mine. Two different breaking points. The same conviction waiting on the other side.

We had been working on the same problem from opposite ends.

FROM JASON

I almost didn't go to her workshop. I'd already checked the “purpose” box. Written a purpose statement, stuck it on the wall. Check, done.

What I didn't know, what I couldn't see, was that I was living as if my best work was behind me. I'd climbed what felt like the Everest of my career with Jennifer, and somewhere I'd accepted that nothing would match it.

If you've ever caught yourself thinking your best chapter might already be written, you know exactly how that feels. What you may not feel is how it sits in the background making decisions for you.

Laura identified it in me within hours of the workshop. She named what I couldn’t see in myself.

The irony wasn't lost on me. I'd spent decades seeing things in people they couldn't see in themselves. Turns out it’s much harder to do for yourself.

I grew up in Scotland. Moved to the US at 20 with one suitcase and $3,000 in my pocket. My accent was so thick they couldn't put me in customer service at the distribution company that gave me a shot, so they started me in the corner of the warehouse doing returns. Within three months, I was running their IT systems. No credentials or training. I just figured it out.

Someone gave me a shot I hadn't earned on paper. And for the next 30 years, that's what I did for other people. I hired people who, on paper, did not look like a fit at all.

I learned to read rooms. I learned to spot what a person was capable of before they could see it themselves. Someone had done it for me first. I knew exactly what it meant to be seen like that.

That's the secret inside the $190 million company we built over 25 years. It wasn't just strategy, it was conditions. Build the right ones, and people will surprise everyone, including themselves.

I came out of it realizing that what we had built inside that company was incredibly rare (after Laura helped me see that). The conditions we created for people to come as they are, be themselves, and be appreciated. The way ordinary people did extraordinary things inside those walls. I'd assumed every organization worked that way. Now I understand they don't. Most people spend entire careers never experiencing what we had.

Laura showed me that I'd been sitting on something I hadn't yet understood how to give away. The methodology wasn't retired with Jennifer. It was waiting for a bigger container.

WHAT WE'VE BOTH LEARNED TO BE TRUE

Laura spent 20 years watching what happens after organizations lose their best people. I spent 25 years building the conditions that made people want to stay and perform at levels no one expected.

The pattern we keep finding together is this:

Potential doesn't disappear. It gets constrained. By environments that were never designed with the human being at the center. By systems that train people (without anyone meaning to) to give less and less until one day they stop altogether.

We both believe deeply that...

THE MOST COMPETITIVE COMPANIES WILL TREAT THEIR PEOPLE AS THE PRIMARY DIFFERENTIATOR.

That might sound soft, but its not. It's the most strategic bet a leader can make right now.

Individual transformation without the right organizational conditions around it doesn't stick. And organizational change without the human work underneath it is just rearranging furniture. You need both. That's what we're here to do.

WHAT YOU'VE ACTUALLY BEEN READING

If you've been here since the beginning of this year, think back for a second.

A recruiter collecting signals from the outside… 30,000 conversations with people telling her what was breaking down, what had finally crossed a line they couldn't uncross.

A coach watching people transform individually and then return to environments that quietly walked the transformation back.

A woman who healed her own operating system and watched her ten-year-old son heal, too.

All of it was the same story. The gap between who people actually are and what the environments they work in allow them to give. That gap exists in every organization… the ones that close it on purpose are the ones that win.

That's what The Weekly UNLOK is about, every single week, from here forward.

Real stories. Real patterns. Real thinking about what it takes to redesign the environments where people spend 40-plus hours of every week.

NOW IT'S YOUR TURN

Inner Game: Where in your life are you living like your best work might be behind you? What would you do differently if you genuinely believed the next chapter was bigger than what you’ve already built?

Outer Game: Think about the people on your team who gave everything in year one. What are they giving now? If the answer is less… when did that start, and what changed in the environment around them?

Be honest.

WHAT COMES NEXT

Every Friday, we’ll bring you one idea that makes you a sharper, clearer leader by Monday morning. Drawn from 30,000 career conversations and 30 years of building. From the inside and the outside. From the human layer and the organizational layer.

If you’ve been reading along, thank you. So so much. You’ve been part of something being built in real time.

If someone forwarded this to you and it’s your first time here, welcome. You crossed our minds even though we haven’t met yet. Stick around.

And if you lead a team or an organization and something has been stirring in you while you read...something that feels like yes, this is exactly what I’ve been trying to name, that stirring is worth paying attention to.

We’re here for the ripple effect. ✨.

One person. One team. One organization at a time.

BEFORE YOU GO: HERE'S HOW WE CAN HELP

FOR COMPANIES: The gap between what your people are capable of and what your environment allows them to deliver is not a cultural problem. It’s a performance problem. And it shows up in your results before it shows up anywhere else. We work with a small number of organizations ready to look at that gap honestly. Book a conversation here.

FOR INDIVIDUALS: If you’re looking for one-on-one support, Laura works with a small number of people personally. Book an activation session and let’s get into it.

With belief in our collective rise, one person at a time,

Laura & Jason