Admittedly, Laura Gmeinder isn’t good about asking for help, but she does have an outgoing personal nature. So when she decided to self-advocate by seeking advice from the Madison Chapter of SCORE, the Service Corps of Retired Executives, little did she know that she would encounter a business counselor who looks for personal characteristics, as well as business acumen, when advising entrepreneurs.
That’s essentially how Gmeinder, owner of Laura Gmeinder Coaching & Consulting LLC, began the transition from business consultant to motivational speaker. At the suggestion of SCORE counselor Steve Stone, she began to spread her wings into public speaking while running a consulting business focused on individual and team leadership development.
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Steve Stone |
In reaching out to SCORE, part of Gmeinder’s motivation was to separate her business from the sea of consulting services in the market. Before even focusing her energies on speaking and networking, she was community focused, especially on the professional development of women. She is a past president of the Junior League of Madison and has become active in United Way of Dane County’s Business Volunteer Network, Leadership Greater Madison, Women of Purpose, and more recently the Doyenne Group.
SCORE arranged for her to speak before the philanthropic group PEO International, which stands for Philanthropic Educational Organization. It’s an organization that promotes the advancement of women, and it was perfectly synergistic with Gmeinder’s involvement in the aforementioned groups.
“It was about building on the network and the relationships I already had started to establish when I was in the corporate world, using my outgoing personality and connecting with people,” she says. “I was taking a chance on putting myself out there.”
Given what has transpired it was a smart bet. For Gmeinder, the tipping point was her first presentation at DreamBank titled, “What Do I Want to Do When I Grow Up? – Secrets to Finding the Job of Your Dreams.” She had never presented in a forum like that, and at first they were hesitant to book her. By the end of that first meeting they not only booked her, they also gave her a highly coveted “Dreamer of the Month” slot.
To help her analyze her topic, approach, and demeanor in front of a group, Stone has attended a couple of her energetic presentations before DreamBank and come away very impressed. “Boy, you should see it,” he states with no small measure of pride. “The last time I went to DreamBank to watch her, there were a couple of people there who were quite assertive in their line of questioning to her, and she fielded that just beautifully.
“I was actually sitting there wondering how she would respond. They just would not let go of the points they wanted to make as audience members and she handled it perfectly. She’s matured so much in her presentations and in her interactions with people.”
Just a few years ago, Gmeinder was going through what she describes as a “quarter-life” career crisis. Following her graduation from UW–Madison, Gmeinder worked in corporate human resources for 14 years but wasn’t fulfilled. “I had a more traditional view of success,” she explains. “My internship turned into a job right away and then as my career advanced I was getting promotions, raises, and all the things you’re supposed to have to be considered successful, but at the same time I felt there was something missing and that I was called to have a bigger impact.”
Gmeinder’s consulting niche is focused on the intersection of business strategy and human resources consulting. That’s where successful strategies are predicated on a holistic view that takes into account policies, processes, personnel, and culture. She’s seen her share of business strategies fail because not enough thought is put into these components, which requires insightful leadership. That explains why she concentrates on leadership development with a focus on developing the potential of women, and after moving past the inertia of her HR career she’s determined to help others who feel stuck in their careers.
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Long-term relationships
Today, Gmeinder remains influenced by her aptly named favorite book, Finding Your Element by Sir Ken Robinson, the entrepreneurs featured on her favorite television show, Shark Tank, continue to inspire her, and the counsel of SCORE mentor, Steve Stone, still benefits her.
Stone spent the bulk of his career with Associated Builders and Contractors, where he worked in lobbying, marketing, and membership. When his boss left in the early 1980s, ABC made him executive director and he gradually took off those various hats as he hired “real professionals to do those jobs,” he jokes. “When people ask, I say that I was in organizational development or association management.”
Gmeinder is glad he was. She first met Stone in November 2014 to help her organize her business priorities and to develop a business plan, but Stone immediately recognized that her personality should be “out in the public,” and what has transpired since has validated that belief, not only because of the exposure it gives her business and clients but also because “people realize she’s genuine,” he says.
Counsel from a SCORE mentor does not have to be a “one-and-done” proposition. Even as her business grows, Gmeinder continues to meet with Stone. “I’m real strategic, big picture, and SCORE helps me work out the details,” she states. “When I first started working with them, public speaking wasn’t really what I had envisioned as being a significant component of my business, but now that’s where I see a lot of growth potential.”
For SCORE’s part, the organization would prefer a long-term relationship and a long-term mentoring process. “We have many clients who come to us and they have one or two questions. We help them with those and then we don’t see them anymore,” he says. “In Laura’s case, she’s one of those long-term clients, and our relationship has changed over the months and years. At first she was really seeking some specific direction, some specific ideas to organize her business, if you will. Well, now she will come and tell me what she’s being doing and I’ll help her analyze it.”
A member of IB’s 2016 class of 40 Under 40, Gmeinder has written her own eBook titled Work You Love:How To Find Your *it*, and her consulting and coaching advice has appeared in such publications as The Huffington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and U.S. News and World Report. Given where her working relationship with SCORE has taken her, she strongly recommends the organization’s free counsel to other entrepreneurs.
“They are truly passionate about what they do,” she states. “They want to connect with you as both a person and a business owner to be able to help grow your business and evolve with you.”
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