Author: Laura Gassner Otting

  • Everything is Uncertain, and Nothing is Forever: Dancing with Depression

    Michelle Obama admitted last week that she’s been dealing with low-grade depression. ⁣ ⁣ Girl, same. ⁣Low-grade depression: check! Mrs. Obama didn’t have to do this. But she did. And I’m doing so she opened the doors for so many of us to have conversations that we were afraid to have before. ⁣ She opened…

  • The Opportunity that Almost Didn’t Happen

    This opportunity almost didn’t happen… …but it was one of my highlights of 2019. ⁣ ⁣ Let me take you back:⁣ ⁣ Whenever anyone posts about Limitless, I love to reach out. ⁣ ⁣ “Hi… I’m Laura. You’ve been posting about me and my book, and I figured I would say hello.”⁣ ⁣ When I…

  • An Ode to My Teachers

    Teachers have had a hell of a couple of years. They were thrown like cannon fodder onto the front lines. Parents, desperate to alleviate the burden of unplanned and untrained homeschooling, were torn between normalcy for their kids, battling within between economic stability of being able to actually work, and paralyzing anxiety about safety for…

  • I Can’t Believe I Put on Pantyhose for This

    I put on a pair of pantyhose twenty years ago.  It was nineteen years before I’d wear another pair. When my last company was about five years old, I got the call of most entrepreneurs’ dreams. “Laura, we’ve been watching you, and we like what you are doing, and we’d like to know if you’d…

  • I Am the Problem

    My business tanked because of COVID-19. But it wasn’t COVID-19’s fault. For the past two months, I’ve complained, whined, and cried to anyone who would listen that COVID-19 is the problem. COVID-19 is stopping me from running my business.COVID-19 is not letting me get on planes and stages.COVID-19 is getting in between me and the…

  • Stage Left is My Jam

    I make my living center stage, but if I’m being totally honest, I’d much rather be stage left. Stage left is where it’s at. In March, the business I spent the past four years building vanished into a germ cloud of coronavirus.  This doesn’t make me special.  It happened to a lot of us, in…

  • Cher Knows the Way

    We’re all feeling a little lost right now, aren’t we? But Cher is never lost. Last night I was thinking about all the travel I’m not going to get to do this year, and about all the travel that I loved doing last year.  One trip, in particular, stood out for me: a family trip…

  • Janelle Monae all Dae

    Confidence, power, brilliance. I could look at Janelle Monae all dae in her limitless yellow. ⁣ “Embrace what makes you unique, even if it makes others uncomfortable. I didn’t have to become perfect because I’ve learned throughout my journey that perfection is the enemy of greatness.”— Janelle Monae⁣ ⁣ How many times have you stopped…

  • I Believe Black Lives Matter

    If you believe Black Lives Matter:  Hire them.  Pay them.  Promote them.  And have the hard conversations about why they might turn down your offer.  Are you recruiting them simply for the color of their skin, to check a box, or because you are interested and actually making space for their point of view? And…

  • Memorial Day: Freedom isn’t Free

    Memorial Day is here and it’s gotten me thinking about patriotism lately. “We should get an American flag for our house,” I woke up yesterday morning and turned to my husband and said. “Why? Why now all of a sudden?” he replied. I had a hard time putting it into words, but I am feeling…