Episode 052
Lori Love
Can a “circuitous” career path lead to ultimate financial freedom? Join Alice Tang as she talks with Lori Love, founder and CEO of TwoPaws Ranch. Lori reveals how she moved from seeking basic security to achieving a life defined by influence and choice. She shares the powerful advice her mother gave her about standing on her own two feet and why a million-dollar net worth is simply a tool to buy more autonomy. Learn why Lori believes “nobody does this on their own” and how her network of candid women helped her break through professional roadblocks.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
“ I've been the only woman in the room, the only woman at the table, the only woman in the class. And sometimes it's hard to overcome some of that natural bias that I have. I think this group of women, this audience that you have, we need to be courageous. We need to have opinions, and we need to be comfortable sharing them.”
0:36 Alice Tang: Welcome to Women’s Million Dollar Conversations with Alice Tang, where we share stories from successful business women who have saved, earn, or sold over a million dollars and discuss how they built their success and insights to help you achieve your goals. Now, let’s join the conversation.
0:54 Alice Tang: I’m Alice Tang, the host of Women’s Million Dollar Conversation in Portland, Oregon. Today I had the pleasure to talk with my wonderful guest, my good friend Lori Love in Arizona. Lori, hi.
1:04 Lori Love: Hi Alice. It’s always great to catch up with you and over a number of years we’ve found common ground and lots of interesting topics to talk about. I’m very grateful and happy and excited to be part of this conversation today. Just by a little bit of background, maybe for those in the audience who aren’t as familiar with me, I’m the founder and CEO of a consulting firm, Two Paws Ranch. And we really focus in on business strategy and consulting in the areas of customer experience, employee engagement, change management, and one of my favorites, operational excellence, and optimization. So that’s just a big fancy way of saying we like to come in and help people figure out the path to their best success.
1:50 Alice Tang: Especially with customer and with the employees because those are the key components of a successful business.
1:57 Lori Love: It all comes together. It all comes together. Yeah, that’s right.
2:00 Alice Tang: So our guests who come to our podcast have either accumulated a million dollars, made a million dollars, or sold a million dollars.
2:11 Alice Tang: So tell us about your journey to your first million dollars if you don’t mind.
2:15 Lori Love: Sure. You know, it’s sort of an interesting question because I didn’t really focus on making million dollars. I come from a pretty traditional household for my generation. My dad worked outside the home. He was a school teacher. My mother was a stay-at-home mom. I’m middle of three kids. And you know, we weren’t economically, I would say, advantaged, but we also didn’t feel like we weren’t economically advantaged. So there’s the difference between the feeling and the reality. The journey to a million dollars was less focused on the money and more focused on what I needed to deliver for myself in terms of economic stability. So, I went to school. I got my degree. I got out of school. I got a job. And I stayed at that job for much longer than most folks stay in their careers today. The interesting thing when I reflect on it is I stayed at the same employer, but I changed roles within that company many times. And that allowed me to get an amazing broad-based foundation and in a lot of different disciplines which helped me later on. But it also gave me a path to economic stability that I wouldn’t have expected earlier on in life. So I never started out on the journey to make a million dollars. I started out on a journey to make sure that I would be able to have security in my own life based upon what options money would give me. I know it was somewhere in the first that first career of many years where I hit the million dollar mark, but I honestly can’t tell you exactly when that was. That wasn’t the focus for me.
4:03 Alice Tang: Sure. Because ultimately you and I before this podcast because we’ve been friends, we talk on a regular basis. We talk about money is really a tool when we can detach from just looking at the numbers rather than the power of leveraging it to help us um daily life’s necessity of course right pay bills to the extent of making sure that when it comes to family experience or our experience money can buy those
4:30 Lori Love: that that’s all to me honestly Alice that’s what money provides right it gives you choices and more money means more choices. Less money can mean less choices. But that’s what it provides is that ability to have a choice.
4:46 Alice Tang: This is a place where I am going to pick on you a little bit because you have coached me up about on the conversation that I was driving. I remember when it comes to money, people were motivated by security, recognition, inference and choices.
5:01 Alice Tang: And which of these has played most in your life?
5:08 Lori Love: and maybe today instead of early days cuz you asked me that question about the Alice 25 years ago the Alice today when I was driving that really made me think it’s very different and I still think in these terms even looking back and looking at today in the current world I still think people are motivated by security influence recognition when it comes to money early on I definitely was security oriented with money like I want to live indoors. I want to have food. I want all those things. I will say midcareer it moved much more into an influence role. How can you influence others in positive ways? And then today I would say it’s definitely influence and choice. I’m comfortable enough, as many of the folks in this audience are, to have choices, have the economic opportunity to work with Alice or not, work with someone else or not, help others around me to think about what their motivation is today. And I would say to the audience, understanding that’s going to change over time. All of those are important, but they change over time in terms of influence. And understanding where you are today, in terms of what’s motivating you relative to money is, I think, a real insight into what choices you may want to make.
6:33 Alice Tang: I love it because I’m in exactly aligned with you. Never share our ages. We just mature. Today is all about the choices that money can provide during your path to that million dollars which you don’t track.
6:51 Alice Tang: What is the most significant roadblock that you can think of today? And how did you overcome that? Do you have some tools or just a mindset that I’m going to get through this?
7:03 Lori Love: I I think a lot of it is focus, but if I take it down a little bit, like my generation, your generation, Alice, we had biases that still exist today, right? Gender bias is a an easy one, right? The economic opportunities were not, it was not a level playing field. So, you have to work through that. But then within yourself, I think there is this roadblock, at least for me, of understanding what I really need to thrive. So again, if I divorce myself from the amount of money, and I want to correct you, I do track my money. I just didn’t track when I hit the million. But if I think about what do I need to thrive for me, it wasn’t again this orientation around a number. It was this orientation around what environment works best for me. What are the things that I’m willing to do and not do and how do I how do I characterize those? So I think that was important and to help me work through a lot of that. It was a network. It was a network of women like this who were candid and authentic and open to sharing their experiences to help me find a path forward. Nobody does this on their own. In my experience, nobody does this on their own. So getting in my own head, really becoming honest with myself around what I needed to thrive as I made choices in careers. I I was very opportunistic and I tend to be opportunistic today. Somebody said to me once, “Geez, love, you didn’t take a very straight path, did you? You didn’t pick a field and move forward in that.” And I didn’t. I I changed industries and companies and careers and paths many times. So, understanding what allowed me to thrive within that opportunistic environment and being honest with myself about that was really important. and then asking my network to tell me whether I was actually being honest with myself or not.
8:55 Alice Tang: I think I’m one of those network at least in the years that we’ve been friends because we have been really candid and we actually put each other back in the city that is like oh no that’s not true but it’s what it takes right or we all believe whatever stories in our head we all need those people in our lives who will help us be honest with ourselves at different points and I value you in that role too Alice
9:22 Lori Love: I value you too.
9:24 Alice Tang: I just learned something I from my mindset coach and trigger of a event and then a story we tell ourself and then the feeling because of that story and then that’s drive my behavior. So I think it’s really what story we’re telling us based on what you said.
9:44 Lori Love: Yeah. Sometimes the stories we tell ourselves are truthful and that can be both hard and easy to hear in between our own ears. And sometimes the stories we tell ourselves are not so truthful, right? Sometimes they’re myths and we have to work through that. Which is why I’m saying understanding yourself, understanding myself. I think we all need to understand in our own heads who we are and what do we need in order to thrive and then frankly focus on that.
10:13 Alice Tang: Beautiful. For the audience who’s listening, I just like to make sure that you hear this. The story in your head especially towards money. It could be anything. It’s what you tell yourself. If today you’re telling yourself that I can never make it or I’m going to work until I’m 80 and most likely drop that then and I don’t need a retirement, change that story. Just simply change that process. Just like Lori said, we can have a group of power women who believe in us even when you don’t believe in yourself. And you can make it, right?
10:49 Lori Love: That’s right.
10:50 Alice Tang: You can make it.
10:51 Lori Love: The power of that shared experience is amazing. For me, that was in many ways the way to break through the roadblock. Can I do this? Can I not do this? Right? I might think I can and others may look at me and say, “No, probably not.” Until you do these things. So, go do these things. Then focus on those things and change the trajectory of that activity. Change your path. Change your thinking within your own head. You’re right. People are amazing. So kind.
11:24 Alice Tang: Yes, they are.
11:27 Alice Tang: You have shared a moto with me. Be humble. Be courageous. Be kind. What impact has this mindset you live by? It has impact you personally and professionally.
11:40 Lori Love: It’s it matters. It matters to me a lot. I’ve shared it with you. I’ve shared it with others. I think we have an opportunity especially as women focusing in on wealth management, finance, banking, any of those areas. We see in many ways, I think, organizations and role models that are very male-based historically. And when I see behaviors and have experienced behaviors and when I’ve actually acted on some of those behaviors in the past, I find that we can take a better path as women and as entrepreneurs and as business people if we just pivot a little bit. And this is not exclusively for women, by the way. I think this applies to men as well. And Alice, you and I have talked about this quite a bit. this notion of humility there there can be this very natural American way of motivating oneself and highlighting one’s success and taking a particular path and for me I think that’s fine I think it’s fine for some people but I think often times we don’t allow ourselves to learn when we take that path there can be an assumption of arrogance that comes into play that prevents a true authentic conversation and true authentic outcome if we don’t demonstrate a bit more humility. So for myself and I would invite others to perhaps consider this that if we approach activities with a bit of humility, we can not only do we benefit but those that we’re interacting with benefit from it as well. So I would say demonstrate a bit of humility. Be willing to learn. Be willing to be wrong. Be willing to ask questions instead of coming in from a position of of I would say a bit more arrogance. Next, I would say courageous. Right? Women, we tend to be like I’ve been the only woman in the room, the only woman at the table, the only woman in the class. And sometimes it’s hard to overcome some of that natural bias that I have. And perhaps we as women have to to not be courageous, not raise your hand, not share your opinion. And I think this group of women, this audience that you have, we need to be courageous. We need to have opinions and we need to be comfortable sharing them. So I’m going to invite everyone to embrace courage as well to say the things that need to be said whether they’re comfortable or not. And lastly, that comes with be kind because we can say things that need to be said in kind ways or we can say them in ways that are unkind. We’ve all done it. I’ve done it. And I try to remind myself that kindness is an incredible way of building bridges and helping others to be more than they would have been before they chatted with you. So, be humble, be courageous, be kind is the way that I try to approach the world.
14:47 Alice Tang: You’ve been really kind to me ever since the first dinner you paid for.
14:52 Lori Love: That I paid for. I will always buy you dinner, Alex. Always.
14:59 Alice Tang: But the kindness is the fact that I know you’re a high power and high level sea-level executive. And I also see myself as an awesome woman, but I always envision at that time your life is super busy. super busy meaning you have no time but deal with business and I don’t want to assume there is nothing at the family you need to take care of there’s a lot and now that I learned of course you’re married and then you have dogs that you can take care of you need to take care of family and other people but you still make time for me on a regular basis that’s very kind
15:33 Lori Love: isn’t that the value though again of network honestly we you’re courageous enough to ask
15:41 Alice Tang: you’re I’m
15:42 Lori Love: I have no problem asking Yeah, but that’s that may it’s still an example for others to follow and humility is I am very humble in being asked and you think that there might be some value that I have and so why wouldn’t I be kind anyway so that’s how I try to approach things and I’d love to encourage others to think about that in terms of their own behavior and engagement not just in their business life but in their personal life as well.
16:10 Alice Tang: What is one piece of advice you would give to the woman who’s looking up Lauri? I can relate to her for the journey to financial success.
16:21 Lori Love: People tell me I’m very focused, which is true that whether I’m in the gym or whether I’m at work or whether I’m doing other things, it is an area of focus. Years ago, I came up with a personal brand of relentlessly cheerful. I would say find your brand and stick to your brand. I am absolutely relentless, focused, goal driven, cheerful is the other way that you can that you can orient around me. But you got to pay attention to both of those because I am relentlessly cheerful. So find that personal branding for yourself and then stick to it, right? Stick to it and keep focused on whatever it is motivating you at that time. Security, whatever works. Choices.
17:06 Alice Tang: Choices. Choices.
17:08 Alice Tang: Yes. Yes. Was there any advice that you were given early in your career that impact the view of money and financial success?
17:19 Lori Love: I don’t think it was so much in my career, but my mother who was a stay-at-home mom and yet very very commercially minded. I guess I would say it just wasn’t generationally as acceptable for her. But her guidance to me was always be able to be independent. Find that path to stand on your own two feet. Don’t depend on others. You are capable. So I think that colored a lot of my choices moving forward. On the other hand, I had lots of great mentors who were so willing to share their time and experiences with me in financial services, in banking, who saw things in me that maybe I didn’t even see in myself. And so trusting a little bit of their advice to take the risk, take the journey, I think that helped me a lot.
18:13 Alice Tang: Mentors so very important. mentor from mom all the way through to Alice.
18:22 Lori Love: My mom all the way to Lori. That’s right.
18:27 Alice Tang: So, in case the audience didn’t know, we are the fans of each other. So, cheerleaders.
18:34 Lori Love: We all need cheerleaders.
18:37 Alice Tang: I know. I know. And you are mine. You’re mine.
18:41 Alice Tang: How do you use money to leave a legacy and make an impact to the community or the next generation?
18:47 Lori Love: I think we do what most people do, right? We find causes and and philanthropic opportunities. My husband and I both give time to causes that matter to us. And we have family. We do our best obviously through extended family, through kids and nieces and nephews and all of that like everyone I think thinks about doing and we’re fortunate enough to be able to give both time and money to help those around us, you know, pursue the journey that works for them and to help forward some of the causes that we have a lot of passion around. So, at the end of the day, there’s not going to be some plaque somewhere that says Lori Love did this. I don’t think that’s the value that we’re looking for. It’s not recognition, but it is knowing within ourselves that we’re doing what we can to benefit those around us in the the best way that we can.
19:42 Alice Tang: That’s absolutely right. It’s a choice. Money give us choice to do so in the way that is unique to us. Because what sings to your heart does not mean that it sings to everybody’s heart. So we love to give to women but I am afraid of dogs. So definitely I wouldn’t donate to the dogs association but doesn’t mean that they’re not important.
20:07 Lori Love: We give a lot to dogs. We do a lot of dog rescue. It matters. I know that’s different out of homeless and try to help them. But listen, I speak at schools. I speak at universities. I try to make myself available to young women who are coming up as well and take what works for you or not. These are all conversations that we have with each other and there isn’t a singular golden path or idea that works for everyone to your point Alice. So the legacy is sharing information, sharing your our value, what we can contribute through our experiences and the dollars that we have to help. I think that’s all we can ask for. In terms of legacy
20:50 Alice Tang: today we are very grateful for you sharing your stories and this will be legacy one one of the legacy of Lori.
21:00 Lori Love: Thank you. Thank you for inviting me.
21:05 Alice Tang: We’re so happy to have you and your information will be in the show notes.
21:10 Alice Tang: Thanks again.
21:12 Alice Tang: [Music]
Lori Love is a dynamic, cross-industry operating executive and former Chief Customer Experience Officer (CXO) with over 20 years of leadership experience across private, private equity, and Fortune 100 companies, both domestically and internationally.
As the leader of Two Paws Ranch, LLC, a private consulting firm, Ms. Love focuses on driving Private AI-centered Strategic Transformations, Operations, Executive Coaching, and Change Management. Her passion lies in helping enterprises rapidly design, optimize, and scale innovative strategies, ensuring cultural alignment with corporate goals to create tangible value and growth.
Her deep global expertise spans a variety of industries, including Digital Media, Financial Services/Wealth Management, Franchises, SaaS, B2B/B2C, and BPO organizations. Throughout her career, she has been responsible for managing substantial budgets (over $80 million) and influencing significant revenue streams (over $1.9 billion), establishing her reputation for delivering amazing customer and employee experiences at every touchpoint of the enterprise journey.