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She is sure, she is true, she is straw is straw,
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She is true, is true, she is pray pray, she
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is she is you.
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Hello, everyone, welcome to today's Word of Mom Radio. Here
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on the Word of Mom Media Network. I'm your host,
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Dori Di Carlo, and you know we are here week
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after week, show after show, breaking those myths that morepreneurs
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and business women, especially those of us building our businesses
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from home, that we're just dabbling in between bake sales
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and getting our nails done. We're not. We are smart,
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we are savvy, and we are sharing the wisdom of
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women in business and in life. And I'm looking forward
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to bringing today's guest into the show. Elona Lapari is
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the founder and CEO of The Life School. He's the speaker,
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best selling authored a numerous books. She's an award winner,
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show and speaking event organizer to an audience of over
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thirty thousand people. With purpose driven, service based entrepreneurs and corporations,
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he has supported more than one hundred companies double and
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triple their impact and revenue through fractional and business management
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operations and human resource services. She's the prior Fortune five
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hundred c Suite executive and also featured in Disrupt, New
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York Weekly, Business Insiders, CEO Weekly, The Business News, and
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Famous Times. I can tell you more and more about Alona,
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but it's better to bring her into the show. So
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with all that being said, Alona, welcome to Word of
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Mom Radio.
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Thank you so much. Story. It's a pleasure to be here,
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and I hope the conversation will be having will be
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of service to all the moms in the audience.
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Oh me too, So I would love for you to
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take us on your journey from the c suite and
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everything else to being the founder and the CEO of
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the Life School.
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Yeah.
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I think it started with the inner conflict of pretty
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much losing sets of my purpose while I was working
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for corporation raising my kids. I have two kids, a
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girl and a boy, which are older now. But during
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that time, which was over five years ago, I started
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to lose sense of the meaning of why I was
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doing what I was doing. For many years, I climbed
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the corporate ladder over thirteen years for this fortune five
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hundred company to really, you know, chase success, chase the
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American dream. I'm natively Albanian. We migrated here when I
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was only fifteen, So my dad especially instilled it very
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early in me that you know, in order to be
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successful and be happy and fulfilled and all those things,
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it was good to be able to grow my career,
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build my family alongside and all of that, and buy
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house and all those things that are promised to you
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as the American dream. I did all of that. However,
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there came a point where I reached all the way
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to the top without feeling happy. So that's kind of
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where I started questioning my what was I going to
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do next? Was there all there is? These were all
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the questions that were kind of puzzling me at that time.
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It was really not connected to what I was doing anymore.
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The company happened to be acquired by another company, and
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the culture change there was very profit driven, so that
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was sort of my clue to figure out, Okay, what
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else I was going to do. Was I going to
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go get another job based on all my experience, or
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was I going to try out this thing called entrepreneurship,
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which for me was very new because I didn't have
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entrepreneurs in my family. So my husband supported me a
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lot during that time, and he's like, why don't you
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just try to just offer your services on your own.
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You have a lot of experience. So that was the
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beginning my tapping my feet into entrepreneurship. While I still
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worked for two years, I started growing my small business,
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and when I felt comfortable enough to make the pivot,
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I just switched to entrepreneurship full time, and that's what
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I've done now for over six years.
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That's awesome. I would love for you to kind of
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share how you created the philosophies and the steps that
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you have. I'm looking at your seven pillars at scaling
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a legacy company, and there's such interesting components to all
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of this. How did you come up with that balancing
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purpose and profit and all of that conceptual information that
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the Life School is sharing.
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Yeah, it came through a process in my own evolution
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as an entrepreneur. I started out coaching executive women which
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also were moms, where they needed help with be success
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from their career, lending leadership roles, but also balancing their
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personal lives. So that's where I began, and then I
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realized that that there was something else that I still
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kept me in the corporate space. So I wanted to
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explore the rest of the world, so to speak. I
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was like that child, trying to like figure out, like
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what else is out there now on the market and
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what else do I want to do? So I tapped
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into some career coaching as well, because I did HR
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for many years and I still felt like that wasn't it.
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And through my process of discovery, I realized that the
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two things that I did really well were always business
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and leadership. So over my process of helping now startups
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all the way to companies in ten million in revenue,
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I realized that there were seven pillars that always showed
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up in building a consistent a company that's going to
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create impact, but also a successful company that operated independently
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from the founder and the team and the owners. So
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over the years of my experience, I realized that those
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seven pillars, which is branding, marketing, sales systems, and team,
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are the seven pillars that are very foundational to any
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company that is scaling or growing. And I worked under
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that methodology for a lot of the businesses that I
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have supported, because I believe that, just like personal life,
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if we don't have the foundation in place, then we
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cannot build something as big or as small as the
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CEO and visions it to be So that's how those
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pillars came about. It was just experience of supporting companies
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and seeing what were their biggest challenges and what were
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some of the things that were always repeating. And I've
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always been a fundamental sort of person. I like to
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always go deep into things, not just superficially fix, you know,
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things that are going to maybe break tomorrow. So over
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the years I've I've kind of just came up with
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my own pillars and structures to support to support businesses
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and their growth.
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How did you decide to be working in the service
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based industries with entrepreneurs and corporations and kind of let
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people understand what that's all about.
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Yeah, I love your question because this came from my
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own experience being a service provider, but also the fact
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that service to me is tied to serve contribution and growth,
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and those were actually two of the things that I
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realized over my experience were going to not just keep
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me happy with the work I was going to do
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choose to do in the world, but also we're going
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to keep me very fulfilled because I was always going
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to meet contribution in service towards others. Plus I also
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realized another challenge with companies that have a service, it's
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harder to scale because a lot of the time the
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service is connected to the founders. So just piecing a
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lot of things together, I started really staying in the
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lane of service and just making sure that I was
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improving the way that I was supporting companies to be
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able to build a personal brand, but also detach eventually
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to build a company brand where it was going to
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be easier for them to scale a service rather than
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a product, which traditionally it is easier to scale a
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product because the product is kind of its ill entity.
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So that's that's how I came about just niching in
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the service space for the work that I'm going I'm doing.
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How can you help them scale and stay true to
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their purpose because quite often that purpose changes as a
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business growth.
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Yeah, it's absolutely a process of evolution, So depending on
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where they are in their growth phase. I've seen two
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main patterns that always show up, and with well growing
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my own company, but also seeing it with my clients,
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is that at the beginning of a business, it's good
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to focus on a business model that's more quality than
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quantity because you don't have the foundation in place you
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don't have the brand in place yet, and a lot
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of those structures that are needed, maybe even your systems
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of how to create consistem sales. At the beginning, it's
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good to understand how to set those things in place
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and build a personal brand. And then eventually, once you
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have all of those pillars in place, you can start
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to scale your personal brand into your company brand. And
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then of course you'll have more systems and you'll have
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team around you that you could start to connect to
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the dots, so to speak, between your company brand and
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your personal brand, I don't think. I mean, we're in
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the environments that we are operating in, you can completely
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detach from your personal brand. But for founders, again, it
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just takes strategy to be able to focus on the
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right priorities in the business for its phase of growth.
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Because that's another problem that I've seen that a lot
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of founders don't understand what to focus on at different
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phases and stages of their growth to give them their
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desired results. So, yeah, doing this in a smart way,
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in a very intentional way, it's really important when you
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are scaling and growing. But that's kind of some of
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the ways that I do it. Once I foundation is set,
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then they can start to detach from their personal brand
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a little bit, but of course still staying consistent with
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both pillars as they get their name out there and
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people start to get to know them and they build
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no and trust, and they build audiences and they build
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communities and all those things which are necessary to grow.
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So are those more of the purpose driven strategies that
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you work with and expanding people living as those purpose
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driven strategies start to take hold.
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Yeah, at any point and grow in the growth journey
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of a company or even our personal growth as founders.
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We always work with the vision, mission and values, and
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that sort of is the guiding start to how they
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we make decisions for their business because, as I said,
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especially in the service space, authenticity is really important, especially
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when you're building a brand, especially in today's world with
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AI and the new sort of conditions that have been created.
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So purpose is always at the forefront, keeping the eye
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on the ball as far as to what is a
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bigger contribution and why we're doing something, And the bigger
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picture is always something that I revisit with the clients
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that I support at all times, because that can change.
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Right we start out, companies are like humans. We start
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out as a certain phase and then eventually we test
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our services and we realize that there's a different problem
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we want to solve, or a bigger problem we want
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to solve. So it's very easy to lose sight of
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your the reason why you started and this is important
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to you. So keeping an eye on that at all
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times really helps with decision making and ensuring that you
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are aligned with that and you're not completely going on
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the other side and building something that's you know, not
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even passionate for you or something that really aligns with
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the founder. So it's just an ongoing way that we work.
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It's not something that we do once and we're like, Okay,
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we figured out what the mission, vision and values are
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and we just forget about it. It's just a way
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of being and just revisiting that every day when making
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really important decisions how to drill the business.
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On that note, think of what Alona just said. We're
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going to take a quick break, say thank you to
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our sponsors, and we'll be back here in just a moment.
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On Word of Mom Radio, she is brave, she is bold,
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she is you, and we want to tell your story.
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Are you ready to share your journey with us on
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Word of Mom Radio. Go to wordommradio dot com and
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register as a guest. We want to tell your story
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because when you win, we all win.
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In twenty seventeen, Unsilenced Voices was formed to help survivors
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of domestic abuse and gender based violence worldwide. The organization
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currently serves Siri Leone, Rwanda, Ghana, and the USA. In
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twenty twenty two, Unsilenced Voices gifted over thirty three thousand
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dollars to survivors in the USA and in sire Leone.
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There are over twenty six young girls who have been
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rescued from sex trafficking and domestic abuse and now going
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through vocational training school in order to better their lives.
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We need your help. Donations are critical in order for
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us to continue our work. We also need volunteers to
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help with research and development. Please visit Unsilenced Voices dot
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org for more information.
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And we're back here on Word of Mom Radio. We
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are talking with Alona Lapari, who is the founder and
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CEO of the Life School. And I really like what
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you had to say about the why because often people
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forget the why, and we say all the time here
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on Word of Mom radio that women start with why.
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Most women in business see something, especially in a product