Chaos to Clarity: The Systems Behind an Untamed Life

What if the reason your business feels stuck isn't the strategy — it's all the disconnected parts that nobody's connecting? Fractional COO Lauren Zaslansky Conner has spent decades doing exactly that: linking the systems, the people, and the purpose that most businesses leave siloed.

In this episode, Lauren shares how a "jungle gym career" — moving through corporate, startup, and fractional consulting worlds — taught her that everything is connected: work, family, finances, identity. We talk about the Disney turning point that changed everything, what it takes to navigate bureaucratic blobs when you're advocating for a child with special needs, and why she describes herself as "the fascia of the business."

If you're a founder who can't take a vacation without everything falling apart, or a leader trying to make sense of the whole from the parts — Lauren's work and way of seeing will land.

TAKEAWAYS

1. The jungle gym beats the ladder. Careers that loop, leap, and explore build more transferable wisdom than a straight upward climb — and they feel more like play.

2. Everything is connected. What looks like a business problem is almost always also a health, relationship, or confidence problem. Systems thinkers know you can't fix one without looking at the whole.

3. Chaos is the entry point, not the obstacle. When life handed Lauren simultaneous job loss and a new diagnosis, she didn't collapse — she went into systems mode. Crisis can clarify what matters and what needs building.

4. Be the fascia. The heart has a job. The brain has a job. And the fascia connects them. The most valuable leadership often happens in the connective tissue between teams, functions, and people.

5. Learn the language of every system you're navigating. Whether it's a corporate bureaucracy, a school district, or a county service system — every institution has its own acronyms and power structures. Learning them is a survival and advocacy skill.

6. Founders who are the only ones holding the whole thing together haven't built a business — they've built a job they can't leave. If you can't take a vacation, that's your first clue. 

Connect with Lauren
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurenzaslanskyconner/
Email: lauren@zazbusinesssolutions.com

If you love this show and you’re looking for some new shows to fill your queue, head over to feministpodcasterscollective.com to explore everything FPC has to offer. 

Soul Sucker Quiz

Take the Soul Sucker Quiz to learn which Soul Sucker screams the loudest in your mind so you can release them from being in charge and set your voice free!

https://voice-matters.com/soul-sucker-quiz/

Transcript

Welcome And Meet Lauren

Lauri 0:32

Hi, everybody, and welcome back to the Untamed Leader Podcast. My guest today is Lauren Zaslansky Connor. She is a fractional COO with more than two decades of leadership experience across corporate and entrepreneurial environments who helps founders turn messy growth into clear, sustainable businesses aligned so growth becomes intentional instead of chaotic. Welcome, Lauren.

Lauren 1:00

Thank you, Lori. My pleasure. Happy to be here.

Lauri 1:03

I would love to start off today with asking you what does the phrase untamed leader spark in you?

Getting Rid of the Shoulds

Lauren 1:14

So for me, untamed leader means kind of getting rid of those shoulds, you know, or as I said, somebody used to say to me, stop shooting yourself, Lauren. Um all of the things for me, I am um say a systems thinker. I like to look across organizations or bring things from my personal life into my working life and back and forth. And I don't really see the separations. And as an untamed leader allows me to, or anybody, to tap into all parts of the world, all parts of myself and use that in leading in different arenas without kind of the shackles that I have to be in a box.

Lauri 2:00

Yeah, yeah. My first coach ever used to say, You're shouldn't all over yourself.

Lauren 2:06

Yes, exactly, exactly it. And I also mixed a million metaphors in there, right? So no boxes there.

Lauri 2:12

Yeah, we welcome the mixing of metaphors all over the place. I'm the queen, well, one of the queens of mixing metaphors. What are some of the shackles or the shoulds that you have noticed and already released in your life?

Lauren 2:29

So

The Jungle Gym Career: From Corporate Ladder to Creative Path

Lauren 2:30

I, for me, I sort of started my career in kind of a very corporate path. I have an MBA, I worked at very large companies. And then after many years, I went into startups and became a co-founder in a startup and then went into a more consulting fractional world. And I think even those two like that space of kind of going to small, I said smaller and smaller businesses with smaller and smaller, less sexy offices, has been like getting rid of, you know, I need to be climbing this ladder. Um years ago, I read an article about, you know, like the jungle gym of which now would be place structure, I guess, of a career, um, instead of thinking of it as a ladder. And that really resonated then, and it resonates even more now. Not having to go up and up into like the same kind of big business world, um, trying what's interesting and then being drawn towards it.

Lauri 3:29

Yeah.

Lauren 3:30

In different arenas.

Lauri 3:31

Yeah, I love the jungle gym. Um, I have I had asked people at one point in a speaking event that I did to notice that the speaking world tends to have one ladder. Everybody's fighting for space on that ladder, and it goes up to keynotes and TED talks, and any other type of speaking is seen as not as good. When some people don't want to be on that ladder, yeah, they would rather be on a jungle gym where they can choose keynotes, talks, salons, facilitating workshops, shooting TikTok videos wherever the jungle gym, which has so much more of a feeling of like play, try one side of the jungle gym. And if it doesn't feel right, then like climb back down or leap over to the other side.

Lauren 4:23

Yeah, and that looks fun. So I'm gonna go try that for a while. And it's not that you're um forgetting all the things you've done before, right? And for me, that's been like, oh, I wanna I wanna do this business thing now, and I'm taking everything I learned from before and bringing it in, even if it's a different industry, right? But it's like this is something I need to learn now, and I'm gonna go learn it here, and then I'm gonna go over there and learn something different.

Lauri 4:50

Yeah, and the when you said that, it's like you can add to your jungle gym at any time. You know, if you only have a ladder, it's just that one ladder. If you have a jungle gym and you go learn something over here and then add it in, it's like you're adding extra wings to your jungle gym, like adding on to a house.

Lauren 5:08

Yes, and I love it, it's funny you're talking about this. My friend, who actually is the person who um developed my logo, because of course you go back to your childhood friend to write something because it's the core of my being. Um, but when we were little, we used to make up games, right? We went to like the little, you know, bars, the monkey bars in my backyard, and we would make up games, like just the way you're talking about. This is what we did when we were five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, right. Um, and that's how I have composed my career, right? Composed my life. And I I love that you're taking, you know, you sort of add it on because the things that we do now weren't things that we that existed when we were little, right? You didn't start your life going, I want to be a TED talk speaker, because that wasn't a thing.

Lauri 5:56

Yeah.

Lauren 5:57

Right. You could have planned that.

Lauri 5:59

No, not at all. Um,

First Leadership Memory: Class Secretary and the Microphone

Lauri 6:01

I am curious where your leadership journey began. Like, what's your first thought or memory that pops up that was a moment of leadership?

Lauren 6:13

So I have when I was in high school, um, the first thing that I remember I was I ran for and won, the first thing I think I won was class secretary. Um I don't even remember being class secretary. I remember I think I either won the election and then the next year I was unopposed, right? Um, but I remember thinking that was kind of a big deal. I think I beat the very pretty popular girl and I was like, ooh, this is the thing I could do. Um and that was, I was I had a lot of friends in high school, but I wasn't somebody who felt comfortable in front of a mic, right, with a microphone at all. Um, I actually have a very clear memory, and I thought about this um, you know, when I was looking at sort of the soulful speaker, right before you became a team leader, and I said, my first speaking memory is doing a very bad oral report in a you know on genre fiction. And so that's like it's very bad, but you know, so never comfortable with that um at the time. But really saying, okay, you know, I have I have leadership abilities, I just need to kind of figure those out. So I was a secretary of my high school class, and then I think I was secretary of my college class for a year or two and just kind of working my way kind of up as I went. Um and I kind of you know got progressively higher in organizations as I got older. It wasn't like I was the col you know, class president in high school and came down. I actually went up as I as I moved on.

Lauri 7:56

Yeah. How does how did speaking and your leadership weave together throughout your life?

Lauren 8:06

So

Speaking and Leadership Intertwined: The Columbia Women in Business Moment

Lauren 8:07

it's interesting. In college, not so much, right? I have a when I lost the election to be president of my um the nonprofit that, or I guess it was a nonprofit, extracurricular organization, I ended up becoming the vice president, which worked really well for me. But I remember that election where I had to get up and give a speech. Um, and the vice president role was a lot like a COL role. It was an internal systems role, and that actually worked really well for me. Um I remember the first big well, the first big speech I remember was in business school. I was um asked to run, and I don't remember the order of it, but I was asked to launch the women in Columbia Women in Business program for um the organiz, the mentoring program. Sorry, I was at Columbia Women in Business mentoring program, which was a co-mentoring, like group mentoring. And I remember giving a speech in my head. There were 300 people there. We could, I don't know if I could fact check that, but I remember being with the microphone and having this pretty big audience. And that was this first sort of very positive. Like, I gave this speech in front of a lot of people. And like, you know, again, I can't remember the order of it, but that was this first, like, oh, this is fun, right? Like I just remember this sort of, you know, this like um, and again, I don't remember. I gave a speech and then was asked to run the group or or run this program, but launching a that hits that hits a lot of my leadership interest. It was multi-generational women mentoring, business, getting up their leadership, like it kind of all the things that excite me now, yeah, you know, 25 years later, like they were all there in that moment.

Lauri 9:59

Yeah. Ooh, there's so much energy coming off of you. And I would imagine, like what I see and hear and stands out to me is when you had to give a book report, there's almost a should built into why am I getting up and doing this? Because the teacher told me I have to get up and do this. And in the Columbia mentoring program, it hit all the things that you now know light you up, are important to you, that you love to put together. It was like an early big breadcrumb for where your leadership and your life have led you.

Lauren 11:13

Yes. But also, I do want to say something about the book report because there was something else going on there in terms of shackles. So it was about it's kind of the weirder side, but I'm gonna go into it because it's interesting

The High School Book Report: Feminist, Vulnerable, and Unprepared

Lauren 11:25

from a gender standpoint. Um, it was on genres, and for some reason I was like, you know, this little budding feminist, and I said, I'm gonna do it on romance because romance is as valid as anything else. So I did it on a Danielle Steele book, which I'm not a big romance reader. I never, I wasn't particularly even at the time, but I picked it, I think, to be controversial. And I remember I got up there and I was an insecure speaker to begin with. I mean, I was always a talker, but I wasn't an insecure speaker in the front of the room. And then when people started to giggle, I got awkward and weird, right? So there was this piece of me trying to kind of get up and say, like, this is a valid genre. I think I just learned the word, right? But trying to do that and not knowing, you know, it was like, is this too feminine? What does this mean? And I couldn't um do that. And now 10 years later, coming back at this and sort of owning that. Um and over, I mean, over the years I go back and forth, right? That's always a there's always the tension there um with what is you know valid, what is um regular versus girl. And I have so many instances of fighting the system on that. But um early on there was that challenge of like shut up, I'm up here speaking, yeah, you know, um yeah. So but you're right, I think there was the Columbia Women Business. I was kind of given permission to own that, and it felt really good.

Lauri 12:59

Yeah, yeah. The so it was expressing your voice, your perspective in high school, and simultaneously a part of you that wants to speak on behalf of a perspective that not everyone is seeing, and also high school, the you know, if almost everybody has some little tea trauma in our tissues from high school, from you know, someone is a bully or the popular one, and in order for our system to feel safe, yeah, we're tempted to do fight, flight, freeze, or fawn. So I can either fight the bully, I can befriend the bully, I can run from the bully, or I can be invisible. And when you stand up to give an edgy book report, there's no hiding once you're up there at the front of the room.

Lauren 14:04

Yeah.

Lauri 14:06

What did that experience teach you?

Lauren 14:11

That the book report piece?

Lauri 14:13

Yeah.

Lauren 14:14

You know, it I think it's it scared me a little, right? It scared me to um, I didn't necessarily jump at the opportunity to get up there. Um a little of me is always a little self-righteous, right? I do have a sometimes outsized sense of justice, right? And as I get older, that gets potentially larger. But I learned, you know, I over, you know, as I mature, I think all of us potentially learn how to um present that in ways that are palatable when necessary, but also we care l maybe care, maybe I care less about how palatable it is. Um, but at the time, you know, I might have said, oh, maybe, maybe next time I won't, I won't pick that. Or maybe I will um, you know, control myself more if somebody snickers, or like I will, I don't know, ground myself more. I mean, you've done a great job at grounding me here. And and at the time I wouldn't have had those tools.

Lauri 15:19

Um yeah, and we often don't know the first time, you know, we think I've got this great idea, I'm gonna get up there and share it. And then if if we're sensitive at all to energy, when we shift to standing at the front of the classroom, all of a sudden, this energy that was either going away from us because it was going to the teacher or whoever else was up there, or maybe even like in a circle, the energy feels different. But when it's rows of chairs and us at the front, all of a sudden, all that energy and interest and you know, people being forced to sit in chairs that don't want to be sitting there is being directed at us. And it feels very different. And sirens just went by. I don't know if they'll be able to hear it, but it's like, yes, yes, yes. The alarms go off when you get up at the front of the room. So you didn't know what you didn't know until you got there.

Lauren 16:18

Yeah.

Lauri 16:19

And then you know, okay, it's gonna feel different when I'm up here, or the green camera light is on me, or the spotlight is on me.

Lauren 16:27

Exactly. And you see all the little things, right? And I'm so attuned to all the little things, and those are really distracting, right? And so needing to focus on one person or really like a friendly face. And so now when I'm running something, I'm more conscious of you know, let's like go around the room and look at the friendly faces rather than the people who are, you know, maybe a little hostile or not as friendly or bored or whatever.

Lauri 16:57

Yeah, so intuitive. I I will often ask people to do that, just focus on the kindred sets of eyes. And that might mean your best friend is sitting out there, and it might mean, oh my gosh, I can't possibly look at my best friend right now. She's too emotional. But there's this other set of kindred eyes out there that I've never met, I have no idea why. And I'm gonna go ahead and start by looking at them and talking to them.

Lauren 17:24

I see you. Right. And then after the event, you're like, hey, I feel you, I know you.

Lauri 17:29

Yeah, knew each other in another lifetime or something like that. Um, I jotted down in my notes that there was uh I I wrote it down as the Disney turning point. I know there's way more to it than that. And can you tell us about the Disney turning point?

Lauren 17:47

So I assume that was the when the end of Disney when I uh yes, so um I was at Disney for 11 years, and I would say a few

The Disney Turning Point: Layoff, Diagnosis, and Rebuilding Everything

Lauren 17:58

months before I got laid off from Disney, and it was uh one of I'm gonna say many, many, many rounds of layoffs, and there was another one last week that impacted many people who live locally. Um, my older son, you know, was diagnosed with um autism, different special needs. And so I had this major shift. So I had figured out both kind of as a parent and a caregiver what you know, well, I didn't figure out yet. I started to learn that I needed to jump into a new world of caregiving or um learn a new language, and then I got laid off from this job. And as I had been on this very, very straight and narrow path my whole career, right? I had gone to college, I had a pretty direct feed into a certain career, I went to business school, I then got a job, you know, with short gaps in between, but pretty direct, 11 years. And then boom, new world, right? Um, and at that point, I dug in as, you know, I'm a I'm a learner, I'm a going in deep. So it took me, it was about nine months before I landed my next role. But in those nine months, I learned all I could about what I needed to do at that moment. And I had a son who was four, and I needed to, you know, find new childcare. I needed to find childcare for both my kids because they were at Disney Daycare, right? I needed to figure out, you know, what services we could get, how we were gonna support those, um, you know, what we needed to do. And that began this journey that every few years really has a reset, both with the school and the county, um, but also medical, I don't say medical treatments, but medical language. Um, and also a journey in guiding others in their in their worlds, um, helping other parents find their way, you know, and and taking all the skills that I have as an operator, as a systems thinker of how I approach the world of big corporate bureaucracy, how I is the same way as I address big government bureaucracy or just big big systems that you have to tackle to get what you need. Um, and I have, you know, we're one family with one kid with only, you know, with limited energy, right? And limited resources. And we have to figure out how we're going to um get the services and get the support we need. Um and it feels like there's like this blob of like this blob of things, and there's a big building in the middle of the blob, and we're going to try to attack it and find out what we need to get out of it. And when parents, you know, when you're met with this, you're like, uh where do I start? Right. There's like, you know, a room of acronyms that you have to translate, and then you have to, you know, pick out the things you need for your kid at this time, and in a year, those are complete might be completely different, and you're learning as you're going. Um, and so that was this turning point from going from like something that felt maybe hard, but you knew what you had to do, to like hard because you don't know what you have to do.

Lauri 21:45

Yeah, very I'm seeing like a street that you were on, and then there was a disruption of getting laid off and getting the diagnosis at the same time, and then you use the word blob. So going from a street, a paved street was what I was seeing, to a blob feels pretty huge. And I'm curious, what was your response to it in the very beginning? Like, you know, some people are like, oh, thank gosh, I have all this time on my hands, I don't have this job while I'm doing this new thing, and other people are feeling like they've become part of the blob because everything that they knew is now gone. Where were you in that spectrum?

Lauren 22:31

So it's interesting. I find there's something about my brain that, like under extreme crisis, right, I go into action. So this felt like extreme crisis, right? It was like I have this thing to deal with, I'm gonna deal with it, right? I'll crash later. I don't have time to crash now. So um the layoff gave me the time, right? It gave me the capacity, and also because of its Laid off from a large company. I had um a little bit of a step down. It was like, okay, uh, I actually had a choice. I could take a demotion, I could um take the package. I was so happy to take the package. So I had um a decent severance and about two months of like, come in when you need, right? Plus sort of an exit um system, you know, we'll help you with the resume. So there was a link, um the best layoff I've ever had. Just say that. Right. Um, so you know, jumping into action of okay, I'm very good at sort of prioritizing, let's get this done, right? And so for me, that was like, I have a task at hand. I'm going to get this task done, right? Let's go in it. And that task at the time, because we had that diagnosis, um, and I think at the time we had already had the school, um, we were already on our way to get the school assessments, you know. So then we were sort of working through these sort of two mazes, I'll say, um, and picking through those things. So I, I mean, I think there was a you know, a period of time of collapse, but I picked myself up from that that period of collapse and was able to move forward. I mean, for my, you know, for my mental health, the crashes probably happened later, but I know I moved through those quickly, right? I think I took the kids and we went um to the east coast and stayed with my family, my mom for some period of time. I had the summer to do that between the layoff and before there was any preschool that I had to worry about. Um and then, you know, what that led to was getting my son into the right programs. Um, my younger son, we got him into a preschool, which ended up being at the synagogue, which ended up leading into the community. My husband and I both were on the board. I became the co-president or treasurer first, like that changed the entire, our entire life, right? Like that now is most of my best friends are from there. Um, many of his, you know, all of our friends are from there. And so um, you know, it just opened up, it was the moment that everything changed. Yeah. So I would say, you know, in that direct crisis, I am thankful that I had those months to really dig. You know, and I kind of appreciate that every few years you sometimes need that, right? You need to be like, I need to dig into this thing because I can't be also focusing on, you know, this brand guide for this website.

Lauri 25:52

Yeah. As I as I listen to your story, it feels like you are someone who turns chaos and crises and blobs into systems.

Lauren 26:04

Yes, yes, yes.

Chaos to Clarity: How Lauren Turns Blobs Into Systems

Lauren 26:05

And that is that is what I do. Um, and I do that in in lots of different ways. Um, I believe that was the name of a talk I recently gave, you know, it's chaos to clarity. Um, but when often people come, I used to joke with anybody, you know, I'm a life transition specialist, right? And that means, you know, if a friend is like, I don't know if I should get married, or I don't know if I should get divorced, or I don't know if I should have kids, or should I leave my job? It's like, let's talk through what needs to happen. Um, but I also because I think about things in this case, for me, I was thinking about everything is connected, right? I have I have a job that pays the bills, that takes me out of the house for a certain amount of hours a day, that my kid goes to daycare for okay, right? My kid goes to daycare, both kids go to daycare that is supplied, not you know, I pay for it, but is connected to this location. Once that thing goes away, we need to make up, we need to make the whole thing over, right? So I think about when I work with corporate clients, and people say, well, it's just business. I said, Well, what's what does that mean? You know, most clients I work with, you know, if they're a business owner and they have a family, and then they say, Well, you know, I'm I'm working with the business and I'm not taking, you know, I'm not taking an income. And they may not be worried about the money, like they may be able to live off the money that they have in the bank, but that is impacting their confidence, which might be impacting their health, and it might be impacting their relationship with their partner, and it might be impacting how they're raising their kids. Like it's all connected, right? And so thinking about how you prioritize and putting that in some sort of order, um, it's not fair to say it's just this one thing. That doesn't solve your problem.

Lauri 28:12

Yeah. Yeah. It's like saying one part of the body is just one part of the body.

Lauren 28:19

100%. And I like to say, because I, well, my joke is I hate football metaphors and I hate like all the sports metaphors and hunting metaphors. So I like to say, you know, I like to be like the fascia of the business. I like to say, you know, there's the heart and there's the mind and there's a brain, but I like the fascia connects the things, right?

Lauri 28:37

Yeah.

Lauren 28:37

Because you're right. Like it's if you have a heart, the heart's doing this thing, but the blood is running through it. And when you go to a doctor and they're just looking at the heart and they're not looking at the stuff that's going through it, it's not giving you a full picture of what's happening.

Lauri 28:54

Yeah.

Lauren 28:54

Right. And so then you go to individual doctors and they're not talking to each other. And you still I still feel I feel icky here.

Lauri 29:03

Yeah.

Lauren 29:04

You're like, there each person is looking at a different organ. It doesn't help you.

Lauri 29:08

Yeah, yeah. Very that's the the limitations of Western science and eastern has a whole different, you know, it's way integrated. Um, and I don't know why. Well, this popped up because of what you said. I had decades ago a chiropractor who would refer me to a physical therapist rather than being like old the other chiropractors around at the time just wanted me to come back and they wanted to do their thing, and they thought their thing was the best thing. And she was like, Well, I want you to reach a point where you aren't coming back anymore. And I can reset, and then this person can also work at it from a different angle, and those two together are more likely to miss so that you reach a point where you're not coming to see me at least once a week, if not twice. And it was so revolutionary for a chiropractor to say that because they at that time, everything else I had count had encountered was our profession is better, and it's either or.

Lauren 30:19

It's so weird. Actually, I had a very positive experience with a chiropractor, and I was always skeptical, but I had a chiropractor said it we're gonna work with you, and here's gonna be exercises to do. And then when I went to the spine doctor and I wanted to do the MRI, and he's like, I don't want to see it, I don't want to see it. And the spine doctor tried to, you know, give me a football analogy for my back and only had male pictures on the walls. And I was like, I'm gonna come back to this guy. Like I he's trying to explain football to me. And I said, of course, because I make a point. I'm like, I don't understand football. And he tried to explain football to me instead of the back. And I was like, this was like two years ago. I said, Yeah, you know, like, where's the camera? Like, you can't be kidding. But right, but if they work together, yeah, you're like, it can't be either or. Like this doesn't work.

The Fascia of the Business: Connecting What Others Leave Separate

Lauren 32:03

And so that's how I approach things, right? And and I see you, and what appealed to me about your, you know, untamed leader mindset is like it's not these boxes, right? It's it's getting rid of these sort of whatever, the taming. Like, let's let's figure out how things tie together. And um, that's how you're as a human, that's how you work through the world, right? You um when you're successful, you're tapping into the different parts of your life and bringing them together. And I feel like that especially as a woman, as a mom, I I have I realize I have no ability to compartmentalize, like it's all connected. And when I allow myself to do that, I'm much um I feel much better.

Lauri 32:51

How are you using your voice as a leader in the world now? How are you bringing all of the pieces together and what are you doing in the world these days?

Lauren 33:02

So the newest thing I'm doing. So yesterday, I'll say I I'm starting to do um workshops with parents of kids with special needs and consulting, um, so consulting with parents who are going through this journey, right? Wherever they are in the journey. And basically that means it's a combination of either group coaching. So I did this with a friend, Meredith Canaan, and she is a coach who often works with um neurodiverse or wired differently business owners and parents to help them sort of think about how the brain works and the different um different types of executive function. And I'm helping to think about, you know, how do we attack these systems? Kind of together, you know, we're helping parents, you know, A, feel less alone, right? Like showing the commonalities between us. Because often parents, you know, you have multiple things going against you, right? You have a situation where home life is hard, right? Home home life with your kid is hard. If you have a partner that is more strange than typical, you have issues with the parents have issues with, you know, just being in the world. And so helping, so what I'm doing is helping parents navigate, um, navigate what services are out there. And sometimes that's starting at the beginning, like here are the buckets of services. This is how you address those services. And then it goes into this is how you advocate yourself for yourself in those services and introducing them to people who may have similar, um, similar issues, but also service providers. And then the next thing on the docket is launching a podcast where I have a bunch of service providers lined up to speak, to say, okay, here, and so in one case, a therapist, um, a speech therapist, an occupational therapist, I have um various uh people who are connected to the regional center, which provides services and saying, okay, what do you do? How do you do it? And then I can help people say, well, if you need somebody like this, this is how you access that, right? Um, and helping them do that. Because to your point of connection, um, often people you go to school and you're waiting for them to give you the services and you go through this one channel, but one kid, only a certain amount of hours a day. That kid has limited bandwidth, right? Limited hours. You as a parent have limited bandwidth, limited hours. You know, if you're you can't do it linearly because each thing is very disconnected. The medical system does not talk to the school system, does not talk to the county system. Right. Sometimes you're like, I'm I just need this thing, I'm gonna pay for it privately until I figure it out which hole it goes to. So I'm thinking about this holistically, trying to make connections there. So that's what I'm like the newest thing. Yeah. Yeah. Um and separately from that, separately, uh, you know, um, still working with clients to help them when they're ready to, or not ready, thinking about scaling or selling in the future. Um, you know, I say if they if they want to sell or scale one day and they can't take a vacation, they should talk to me. I can help think about how do they prioritize? What do they do next? Right. So those are kind of the two areas that I'm focusing, focusing my my schemes on right now.

Lauri 36:58

Your schemes. If you if you're listening audio, we're making like evil man with a mustache gestures with our face.

Lauren 37:07

Right, right, right. I don't have a cat.

Lauri 37:10

But um the images that were popping in my mind as you were talking about that were um first I was seeing like the road that you started on, the paved one-way road. And what you're helping people do is like create the path for them where you're putting like more like rocks, like if you were doing a renovation. We watch a lot of shows. Yes, yes, yes. And you go from like, I don't know, a road pathway up to the house, and you decide to actually like lay down rocks that those people have chosen because it fits the design of their home. And then I started seeing more of a web that you're kind of out there in a solar system or a web helping to connect, to connect all of this stuff, as you're also helping some of the people lay the specific rock in front of them by working with them, by leading workshops, by eventually the podcast where they can listen to the podcast and for themselves go, Oh, she said if I needed help with someone like this, this is how I would go about doing that. So they're taking their own rock and setting it down in front of them and then walking on it.

Lauren 38:23

Well, that's beautiful. Earlier you asked me to set an intention, and the word that came into my mind was connection. So apparently that magic happened and you caught it.

Lauri 38:33

I caught it.

Lauren 38:34

You caught the word.

Lauri 38:36

All kinds of connection. Yes, yes, yes.

Lauren 38:39

So thank you for that.

Lauri 38:41

Where can listeners find you? This links will be in show notes and things like that. And for people who are driving a car and listening or out hiking and listening, what's the best place for people to seek you out if they want to go deeper with you?

Lauren 38:56

Yes, I'm the easiest way is on LinkedIn. Um, it's Lauren Zazlansky Connor and Lauren is L-A-U-R-E-N. Zazlanski is Z-A-S-L-A-N-S-K-Y,

Where to Find Lauren

Lauren 39:07

and Connor is C-O-N-N-E-R. People spell all of them wrong. Um, but I'm the only one. So if you get it a little wrong, you should find me. Um and then you can also find me at Zaz Business Solutions, and Zaz is Z-A-Z, and the other ones are pretty straightforward.

Lauri 39:24

Awesome. Thank you. All righty. Now it's time to slide into the Pivot pivot. All right. Lauren.

Lauren 39:33

Oh, water first. Water first. Okay. What is your favorite word? Onomonopoeia. What is your least favorite word?

Lauri 39:48

What turns you on creatively,

Pivot Pivot: Lightning Round

Lauri 39:50

spiritually, or emotionally?

Lauren 40:00

Storytelling. People telling me their stories.

Lauri 40:03

What turns you off?

Lauren 40:09

Um people who are shut down. Saying no.

Lauri 40:15

What's your favorite cuss word? What sound or noise do you love? Rolling ocean. What sound or noise do you hate?

Lauren 40:31

Unanswered phone or knock. It just keeps going and nobody gets it.

Lauri 40:37

What profession other than the ones you have done in your life would be fun to try?

Lauren 40:45

I would be a camp driver.

Lauri 40:53

What profession would you not like to do?

Lauren 41:00

Um everything sounds interesting to me. Um, sorry, I got stuck because everything I think I might want to do. Um anything I bought myself. Um sorry, I got stuck on this one. Um my mom used to always say the toll booth job was like the most boring job, but then I think every single person might be, I could say hi to that. Maybe not. I'll say the toll booth collector person, although I don't know.

Lauri 41:30

Yeah, it sounds like anything without connection.

Lauren 41:32

Anything without connection, anything by myself sounds horrible to me. Yeah, like I yeah, or anything that I have to do the same thing every single day doesn't sound interesting to me.

Lauri 41:42

Yeah. Lauren, what do you hope people say about you on your 100th birthday?

Lauren 41:50

Um that I made them feel seen and I understood them.

Lauri 41:59

Well, thank you for coming on the show and letting me see you and you seeing me during the process of the show. It's been wonderful to have you.

Lauren 42:08

Thank you, Lori. It's been wonderful to be here.

Lauri 42:10

And if you are a listener and something in this episode has touched you, made you laugh, made you cry, touched your mind or your heart, please rate it, like it, follow it, share it, send it to a friend, all those things. So that people who are looking for someone like Lauren, who might be touched by her story, can find it. And I will see you back here next time.