Create Transformation In Your Business And Life By Following Your Instincts (with Special Guest, Larry Easto)

If you’re ready to embark on your transformative journey on your terms, listen in. 

Larry Easto is a seasoned professional with over 40 years of experience in law, consulting, and coaching. 

In this episode, Larry shares insights on aligning personal values with business and life success, offering a roadmap for professionals seeking authentic transformation.​

What You'll Discover:

• Strategies to align your personal values with your professional endeavours.
• Insights into the journey of reinvention and embracing new beginnings.
• The importance of authentic marketing in building meaningful connections.
• Practical tips for self-employed professionals to grow their service businesses.
• The role of mindset and resilience in navigating professional transitions

🌐Learn more about Larry’s course Your Transformation Connection 

🤝Connect with Larry https://www.linkedin.com/in/larryeasto/

Simple & strategic marketing solutions for the busy coach and consultant. Visit www.reinventingperspectives.com

Transcript

Larry Easto: [00:00:00] a lot of the times when people try to make a transformation, we focus so much on the problems that we make the problem bigger than it really is. They become insurmountable. And through experience and research, I've learned that a better approach is to figure out where we want to be. And once we figured out where we want to be, then what we do is go through identifying what our strengths are so we can apply our strengths to get to where we want to be.

It's.

Priscilla Shumba: Welcome to the Lessons of Entrepreneurship, the Journey of Reinvention. Today I have a special guest, and if you've been listening and following the show, he's no stranger to you. I have Larry Easto here, and Larry helps self-employed professionals grow their businesses. Larry, thank you for coming back and please remind our audience [00:01:00] who you are and what your mission is. 

Larry Easto: first , it is a joy to be back. 

One of the things I've realized over the years 

is that when you're a self-employed professional providing services to clients, it's not so much about running a business.

It's all about building relationships and maintaining relationships. And the best way to do that is authentically. So what I try to do 

is help, 

self-employed professionals. Succeed in their businesses the same way they succeed in building and maintaining friendships. So instead of a business model, it's more of a personal one-on-one kind of a thing.

It seems to be working. 

Priscilla Shumba: Larry has over 40 years. Years of experience in professional services. 

please remind the audience, 

the career path 

that you've taken.

Larry Easto: it hasn't been easy. It hasn't been straight for the most part. It's been fun. 

I used to say that I'm a 

master of default decisions. I made a lot of decisions by default, but now I realize it was probably meant to be, I had to pick up a lot of experience along the way. 

I, 

graduated from university.

I didn't know what I wanted to do, so I went to law school, , wound up practicing [00:02:00] law, working for a couple of other lawyers, 

as a result of a disagreement over how a file should be handled. I started my own practice and that was my 

first shot at running my own business. A lawyer in a small town.

So I moved to a big city to become a consultant, then from there did some writing and some training and coaching. 

And this is where I'm now I'm pulling together 

some of my life lessons learned in order that I can package them and pass them on to others so 

they can share some of the benefits without the frustrations I've had along the way.

Priscilla Shumba: We're excited to, to learn more about that. Your Transformation Connection. Larry, you talked about how you're working on this course and 

putting the final bits and pieces together the last time we spoke, 

Larry Easto: by way of backstory, I moved a few years ago and I just got a tremendous surge of creative energy. So I started writing a book and one book turned into two books, and I thought, gee, do I really want to have two books to try to market? So then what I did was consolidate 

the business kinds of content into the book and [00:03:00] thought, Hey, 

let's put the rest of this into a video course.

So it's 

not as much about running a business, but about making the transformation from where we are to where we want to be. And I think

instead of starting out from scratch, we say, what have we done? 

Well, how can we use this to get further along the line? So instead of 

a standard formula 

that was developed by a great MBA somewhere, 

it's a do it yourself process , that guides you from 

the starting point of where do I want to be and what do I have to do to get there, and where do we want to be?

Instead of all sorts of complicated theories and objectives and terminology, that kind of stuff. 

I like to keep it simple. Where we want to be is what do we want to have, what do we want to do, and what do we want to be? So then we focus building our strengths to achieve those desired end results. We're trying to simplify it as much as possible.

As a writer, 

I like simplifying things. I don't like jargon, I [00:04:00] don't like labels, I don't like fancy theories. So 

I've tried to simplify it as much as I possibly can. And 

it's worked. On Sunday. As a matter of fact, I was talking to somebody who'd been through the course and he said, it's so easy because 

It answers questions I have in words I can understand.

I'm going, wow, . I did it. I did what I wanted to do. So that's what I pulled together.

Priscilla Shumba: For the person who's listening, thinking, 

probably I've read a couple of books, try to create transformation, or I've, 

taken this course and that course, and I'm really at the point of 

if I'm to take this, what will be different?

Larry Easto: Over the past couple of years, 

I've become more aware of the fact that I'm a highly sensitive person. 20 to 30% of the population 

are highly sensitive, and I've known that for years. 

but it was 

like a Myers-Briggs assessment.

Nice to know. But so what? 

and once I learned more about the attributes of being a highly sensitive person, I started to realize, 

these are the kinds of attributes that any reasonably [00:05:00] intelligent and motivated person can use to make a difference in their lives. Things like intuition, things like focus, things like thorough analysis, all of those kinds of things factor into it.

After I'd finished the course, 

I was thinking about being 

a highly sensitive person, and I realized that so many 

of the HSP attributes I had internalized and built into the course. It is based 

on real life practice rather than theoretical background.

And so 

I'm asking questions like, 

what did you really enjoy doing? Why did you like it? How can you use that? Attitude or that skill to do something better. How can you do it to get to where you want to be? So 

instead of objective kinds of things, it's totally subjective. There's no right answer, no wrong answer.

It's just what works for you. And what's really interesting is 

I heard 

, a podcast earlier, and this was involving, 

Elaine Aaron, who was basically the [00:06:00] person who discovered HSP. She described HSP exactly the way I described my course. Inadvertently I'll say without deliberate intention, have packaged it to make it easy for people to grab hold of, rather than talking to them.

I want to talk with them and give tools that they can all use and play with. 

Priscilla Shumba: It sounds like, 

this concept of highly sensitive person has a lot to do with allowing yourself to reach where you wanna go, whatever success is for you. However, you have defined it by intuition, by following your own intuition.

Larry Easto: I think a lot of us 

are more intuitive than we really want to accept. 

I trained as a lawyer 

and my training was, 

get the facts, , cold, hard information. But now I'm realizing that if I have an intuitive insight, the next step is to find the information to back up and support the intuition.

We have a lot of personal skills , gosh, we have skills that we don't even know of 

that can be really useful [00:07:00] in building a business even. Being HSP highly sensitive person 

is a neurodivergency. 

it's on the scale, the same scale as attention deficit disorder 

and those kinds of things.

People with Attention Deficit Disorder have skills that lots of others don't. 

they can really hyper focus, for example, whereas a lot of people can't focus to that degree. So it's a case of really going a little deeper 

into. What are the skills we have and applying them to help us get to where we want to be.

So instead of using 

a prepackaged theory, it starts inside. We start inside and then go from there. And 

that's been the story like forever. Know thyself and to thy own self be true. What's happened along the way is the industrial age , taught us about standardization and formulas and procedures and all that kind of thing.

So now we have gurus saying, if you do exactly what I did, you too will be successful. 

Sounds good, but I don't have the [00:08:00] same kinds of skills that person does, or I don't have the same kinds of resources that person does. Or maybe one of my goals isn't to make a gazillion dollars. Maybe I wanna make a difference.

Maybe I want to help people. So we have to move away from the standardized one size fits all solution and get into the, who am I? 

what do I want and how can I use my own skills to get there? 

it sounds simplistic, 

but it's the kind of tool that a reasonably motivated person 

can do something with.

Priscilla Shumba: I'm excited to let our audience learn about this from you, Larry, because I think. What you're talking about is why a lot of times you may follow someone and do exactly as they have said, get the result that they've got, but not be able to keep it because whatever the driver was in that person was not the same driver in you.

And so you may get the results, but you can sustain it.

Larry Easto: exactly. 

I use networking as an example. 

, I'm an introvert and I really don't [00:09:00] like networking, but I've recognized I've had to do it throughout my career. And I would go to in-person networking events 

I'd be saying, wow, glad that's over.

And people say, why you're so good at it. I said, but I hate it. I absolutely hate it. But what I learned to do was 

to really focus on the parts of it that I really enjoyed and the parts I really enjoyed was exchanging stories and getting to know people. As long as I focused 

on the relationship building and stayed away from selling and stayed away from cherry picking and stayed away from the you go in with a list of what you want to achieve.

When I stayed away from that, I was more comfortable because I was relating to people as people. And once the relationship was there, we were positioned to do some kind of business. Now that worked for me. It may not work for other people. Other people may need the agenda, but 

it goes back to who am I and what really works for me. 

Just think about it. If you have a personal connection with somebody, anything is possible. But if you [00:10:00] don't have a 

personal connection, nothing is gonna work. And So , by leading with our personality, leading with our strengths, ideally we connect with people who have compatible strengths, and together 

we can do some amazing things.

The flip side is, 

if there's a disconnect, it's not gonna work. So don't push it. Don't waste each other's time. 

so I learned that 

In Networking and it continues to work now. 

Outta the blue, I met somebody 

Again, we just got chatting. It turned out we are so much aligned.

So we're talking about doing some work together just out of the blue. That's networking, but , I think it's because I am now comfortable in being who I am. I'm not trying to be somebody promoting my services. I'm just somebody meeting people in an environment we're both comfortable in. , 

Priscilla Shumba: Larry. I wonder from everything that you've done, what is probably the one lesson you wished you had learned earlier in the professional services business

Larry Easto: Oh, wow. One lesson 

I think it would have to be 

to spend 

more time [00:11:00] understanding my strengths and embracing those strengths. 

When I look back, 

I spent too much time, wasted too much time, money, and emotional energy. 

either not knowing what I wanted to do or following somebody's well intended, 

but wrong advice.

when I finished high school, had I spent more time thinking about what would make me really happy than how do I get a job? Things could well have been easier. 

I'm an experiential learner, 

so if I knew that, then it would've been okay instead of going on to university, take a year off and travel, get some more world experience.

So 

It would be very much a case 

of doing a better job of getting to know myself. 

it's taken me a lifetime to do it. And it's okay now, but yeah, if I'd known this a whole bunch of years ago, I'd be telling a different story right now.

Priscilla Shumba: It's interesting what you. Said about following well intentioned, 

but not the right advice for [00:12:00] you. 

A previous guest who's done a research with startup companies for the top reasons why startups fail, and he was talking about startups that have got venture capital backing them and still the problem they were failing at a very high rate.

And he said one of the top reasons is that they followed the advice of a mentor.

followed the advice of other startups peers who had created success. 

all the things that people tell you to do, find a mentor, 

get into a peer group of people who are succeeding. Find people who have done very well at doing this thing and get advice 

and he was very surprised in his finding 

that was one of the top reasons that startups failed because. Like you said, every person is different. Every situation is different. The time they created success in the market was different. 

All those nuances that created that success that sometimes we think is just like a straight line.

Larry Easto: I'm reading a book now called , let Them Theory. And it's all about letting other people do what they think is right for [00:13:00] themselves and let me do what is right for me. 

It's great to get the advice of mentors.

I've had 

lots of really helpful mentors who have given me lots of sometimes good advice. Sometimes just in telling their stories, I was able to extract a lesson from it. 

quick example, 

when I was training to be a lawyer, senior partner, 

kept saying, look after your clients and they'll always look after you.

You have to look after your clients. They'll always look after you. And I would say, 

what does that mean? Tell me what it means. And so we told stories about 

when they were going through tough times, , their farm clients would bring food instead of paying for it.

And he said, that's what it's all about. It's looking after each other. So once I had the story, then I could pull out my own meaning. 

So I had people like that. I've also had people 

who just told me what I should be doing, and I'm thinking, why would I want to do that? 'cause it just wouldn't work for me.

So I found 

that. Thanks To experiential learning, 

the best mentors, the best advice is not direct succinct lessons, but stories [00:14:00] that 

we can extract our own meaning from. Another example, 

I work on a project and the

person I was working with kept saying, Frank Sinatra never moved pianos.

And I'm thinking, , what does that have to do with anything? And he stopped and explained, 

Frank Sinatra was a great singer. He could have moved pianos, but he didn't. He stuck to singing. So that expression made sense.

Applying it to my situation, I'm a pretty good writer, but a lousy bookkeeper. So 

I stick to writing and stay away from bookkeeping. So it's a case 

of maybe extracting a lesson from a story rather than 

the strict moral. 

if somebody could tell a story 

in maybe two, 300 words that have more impact than a , 10 word instruction. 

we can't demean 

the value 

of other people. But it might be a case 

of asking the mentor, 

okay, tell me what the gist of that is. What's the takeaway for that? 

what's the important element there? 

or peer groups asking them, 

what did you do [00:15:00] wrong in order to do things right, to get the experiential component in there, rather than just the strict lesson.

Priscilla Shumba: Engage with the information, engage with someone else's wealth of experience and think through it yourself rather than, let me just do what they did. Draw the lessons to get value out of it because everybody has a wealth of experience and sometimes maybe it's just a word that gives you an idea and that's all you needed to hear.

That was enough to give you exactly what you needed 

to move forward.

Larry Easto: Oh, totally. Just totally. 

and just 

a quick look at experiential learning. There's four stages in experiential learning. One is the experience, and then there's the reflection on it. What happened? Who did what? 

what surprised me? 

what delighted me? What disappointed me? Generalization, drawing a conclusion from it.

What does this mean? What does this whole process mean? And the fourth one is, how do I apply this? Look at the details, not just the outcome, but taking a look at 

what went right, what went wrong, drawing a conclusion and, okay, so how can I apply this [00:16:00] conclusion?

In my business? In my life? So once we start to pull apart experiences, they're just rich. With lessons. 

I keep smiling that so many people say experience is the best teacher, but nobody tells us how to learn from experience.

It's only when we pull apart the stories that we start to 

get 

the real gist of them.

Priscilla Shumba: Something that we often don't think about in this culture of 

information being thrown at us and now with ai, everything is just put right in front of us and we forget 

the critical part is that engaging with the information in a certain way to get something out of it.

Larry Easto: oh, absolutely. 

Engaging is the right word because. 

You start to pull apart elements of a story, and there's just so many variables there, and you think, okay, so if these three variables produce this situation, what if I added another variable, or what if we changed one of them?

The learning potential is so rich, just so rich.

Priscilla Shumba: Now to the entrepreneur who's. Focused on saying, 

I've started my [00:17:00] professional services business. I dunno, many people. 

I'm trying this marketing thing and you mentioned authentic marketing, building relationships. Could you tell me if, you were starting over today, Larry, what would be your first step?

Larry Easto: If I was starting today, my first step, 

I think the first step would be trying to find an unmet market niche that my bundle of resources could meet. 

and it'd just be a case of doing a lot of talking 

to people I liked, people I wanted to be with. Questions like, 

what's really bugging you?

What would make your life better? And all those kinds of stuff. And then try to figure out how to use my skills to do that. One thing that comes to mind 

Here's an example of the story. Lots of people talk about writing a book, but not lots of people know how to write a book.

I do. So I could help people write a book. I could help people publish a book. Does Everybody want to do that? No. But all I'd need four or five clients. I wouldn't be their ghost writer. I'd be their, [00:18:00] I dunno, collaborator or whatnot to take it from concept stage to production stage. And again, it's experience I've never marketed before, but that would be a useful kind of a tool 

and I'm not plugging business now 'cause I'm not looking for businesses,, but I'm using this as an example. Somebody has been in business for four or five, six years. They've got some really good experience. 

they've got great track record serving clients. 

the best way , to take the business to the next level is to write a book.

Lots of people write a book. Where do you start? 

hey, I could help. 

I don't have a formula, but I've done enough books , that I could do it, and I know how to get them produced. I know how to market them so I could bundle that into a service to meet the needs of 1, 2, 5, 10 people.

I couldn't have a huge client list. But it could be very specialized and the same kind of thing can be done with other areas. 

you do a lot of podcasting, so you could probably help people with their messaging, with their communication, with telling their [00:19:00] stories, 

Communicating their brand story 

so it's a case of really, 

stepping aside from the normal tags, and labels. And saying, 

how can I use my skills to help that person? And Every market is different. 

Priscilla Shumba: Because you always felt you were a writer and you finally discovered. That was your thing. That perfectly would align with 

providing that service of helping a person write a book , 'cause I think a lot of times people try to sell things that they're not particularly passionate about and they don't really care that much about.

And of course it shows in the long run 

they resent the clients, they resent the work. Eventually they resent even what they're being paid because

it was never something they really wanted to do.

Larry Easto: Most of us like telling about things we've enjoyed. So just going back to 

my example of writing a book, , instead of writing, just talk, just start to tell stories. We can use AI and other technology to convert it to text, and then get a writer 

So there's so many opportunities. 

[00:20:00] again, once we get beyond the labels and once we get beyond the processes, there's 

so many things that can be done. And it's just a case 

of being open 

to leveraging our tools or leveraging our resources to benefit others. 

sure, we want to get paid, but the end of the game, 

if you're not satisfying clients, it's not worth the effort.

Priscilla Shumba:

You talked about identifying your unique strengths and using your intuition 

As the driver of learning, and you're trying to think of getting from A to B. Could you give 

an example, 

Larry Easto: A good starting point identifying what you want, the big picture, 

what you want.

And 

I've broken that down into the have, do and be just to simplify it. So once there's that 

big picture there, it's not a case of just sitting back and dreaming and keeping your fingers crossed 

and hoping that it will drop outta the sky. 

it's taking inspired action. 

My classic example of inspired action 

is from my father.

He used to talk about two girls 

running to school, and the [00:21:00] school bell rang and, 

one girl says, let's stop and pray , that we don't get late for school. And the other one said, no, let's pray when we're running. That's inspired. Action. Praying when you're running. Okay. And 

he lived in a different time and had different priorities.

But that is inspired action. Inspired action 

is doing something beyond routine. It's something that has a direct connection with where we want to be. 

so 

the, first stage, obviously is decide what you really want, and then 

there's 

the actions that have to be taken. And 

I like 30, 90 day plans, 

Of the inspired actions, we break them down into what has to be done in 30 days, what has to be done in 60 days, what has to be done in 90 days, and keep breaking it down and breaking it down and breaking it down and breaking it down. Ideally that once this process is finished, you'll know what you're gonna be doing tomorrow.

You'll know one thing you have to do within 24 hours to get this thing up and running. So it's a case 

Of clarifying, [00:22:00] the big picture. And then breaking it down and breaking it down and breaking it down and breaking it down. 

again, I'm a big fan of the concept of one thing what is one thing you can do right now to make a difference?

and once that one thing is done, another one thing, and then after 30, 60, 90 days, you'll have a whole string of one things that are done 

and the momentum is there that it will carry on. 

I guess I subconsciously do this, 

first thing every morning.

I think now what is one thing I have to get done today and everything else is bonus. I 

quite often have 

to-do lists at nine or 10, and sometimes they get all done and sometimes I don't. 

If I start the day saying. This is one thing I want done by the end of the day, and if it works out, you gotta tick mark off.

You feel good and you've got the momentum. If not, okay, so what can I learn? What went wrong? What prevented that one thing from happening? Maybe it was too ambitious, maybe it wasn't clear. Maybe I didn't have the resources. Maybe I didn't think it [00:23:00] through.

Oh, thank you so much for that, Larry. 

it's been a pleasure having you on the podcast again. Please. I wanna know, what is it that you're looking forward to the future, maybe future trends that excite you in your space? 

what does the future look like?

I have no idea. 

it's funny, 

I just got so many ideas bouncing around in my head right now. 

I honestly don't know. 

I 

want to connect with 

as many people as I can. 

I certainly want to help people with the course and the books. I'm always open for fun opportunities. 

.

Priscilla Shumba: Oh, wonderful. Thank you so much, Larry. Please, to the audience, if you can go to larry easter.com. It'll be linked in the description as well as the link. If you'd like to know more about his book and his course, .

Larry Easto: can I add one more item with reference to the course? Go to my website, option A on the first page will take you to the course, and if anybody identifies as highly sensitive, they will get a 25% discount. That's all on the course. 

And it's self-identifying. You don't [00:24:00] have to pass the test 

I'm highly sensitive, you can get a 25% discount on the course. And there's also two free books on the front page of the website. 

Priscilla Shumba: wonderful. Please make use of those resources. Larry, it's been a pleasure. 

you've got us thinking differently and that's always a good time.

Larry Easto: This was great.