Episode 054
Dr. Laura Gallaher
Can you build a million-dollar business by focusing on “the human side” of work? In this episode of Women’s Million Dollar Conversations, Alice Tang sits down with Dr. Laura Gallaher, an organizational psychologist and founder of Gallaher Edge. Laura shares how she applied her experience working with NASA to help leaders build cultures of trust, accountability, and high performance.
Laura reveals why Self-Awareness is the single most important trait for an executive and discusses how her psychological framework allows founders to reach the million-dollar milestone by “getting out of their own way”. If you want to learn how to lead with more ease and create a team that is truly aligned, Laura’s insights on “The Inside Out” approach to leadership are essential.
In this episode, you’ll learn:
-The strategic evolution of Gallaher Edge and the “NASA-inspired” approach to culture
-How Laura reached the $1M revenue mark by focusing on transformational leadership.
-Why Laura views money as a tool for creating “Choice” and professional independence.
-Tactical advice for using self-awareness to neutralize conflict and drive growth.
"...Research shows that when you do take the time to celebrate, you are actually changing your brain chemistry and you're actually accelerating your growth, which means that you're going to feel less stress and you're way less likely to burn out."
0:34 Alice Tang: Welcome to Women’s Million Dollar Conversations with Alice Tang, where we share stories from successful business women who have saved, earned, 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. Good morning everyone. I’m Alice Tang in Portland, Oregon, your host for Women’s Million-Dollar Conversation, which is a three-year project already. Can’t believe it. I am in the best position to talk with a lot of wonderful, crazy, good women about their first million dollars, whether they saved it, they made it, or they sold it. So, welcome Laura Gallagher, our guest this morning.
1:24 Dr. Laura Gallaher: Thank you for having me, Alice.
1:26 Alice Tang: Laura, before we begin, would you share with us a little bit about your journey and who you are and your company?
1:33 Dr. Laura Gallaher: Absolutely. So, I’m a psychologist and it’s not just an education and a label for me. It’s a passion. Specifically, I’m an organizational psychologist. And so what that means is I really love working with leaders and organizations to help them grow their self-awareness which can ultimately transform everything from how well they communicate to how well they are aligned and have cohesion to how they actually achieve business results in their companies. And so I’ve been doing this work for about 20 years. I started doing the work initially with NASA following the Spatial Colombia accident. and I’ve done my own consultancy for the last 12 years now.
2:17 Alice Tang: Wow. Wow. And you recently had gotten married. We have to put that in. Congratulations.
2:23 Dr. Laura Gallaher: Thank you so much. Yep. I married a wonderful man.
2:27 Alice Tang: I know he’s wonderful. No doubt about it.
2:30 Dr. Laura Gallaher: Yeah.
2:31 Alice Tang: Well, we are here to talk about money. What’s your money legacy?
2:35 Dr. Laura Gallaher: You know, I love this question because it’s actually never something that I have thought about before. And since meeting you and learning about women’s million-dollar conversations, it’s given me something to think about. So, having never thought about it before, I don’t think I have a really clear cleancut answer, but I could see myself absolutely I’d love to create wealth for everybody that I work with. So, everybody that’s on my team, but also the clients that I serve. And money is obviously a huge part of wealth, but I think that it’s only one piece of that bigger picture.
3:17 Alice Tang: You just hit the cord right here with me. Wealth can be defined in many ways. Wealth in relationship. Look at us. We would never have met if not for worry Kogan who has interviewed you about the great work you did and have done right. The wealth of relationship. It really sang a lot of songs in my mind.
3:38 Dr. Laura Gallaher: The wealth of health, right? I don’t know how active you are. You look very fit. Same thing, right?
3:45 Alice Tang: Thank you.
3:48 Alice Tang: Very good. We want to go back to your first million dollar. Tell us about your first million.
3:53 Dr. Laura Gallaher: So, of those different options that you talked about, the one that felt the most meaningful to me was when I achieved a million dollars in annual revenue for my company. Yeah. because I’ve actually I’m so grateful to say that I’ve achieved all of those that you mentioned, but the one that I feel like I worked the hardest at and had set the goal for the longest period of time before I finally achieved it was hitting that seven figure mark for annual revenue in my company.
4:24 Alice Tang: We’re curious about how long does it take for you to do that and if there is any bias or hurdles that stopped you from going there but you determined you get there.
4:37 Dr. Laura Gallaher: It took me about nine years from the time that I started the company to the point that I was able to break that seven figure mark and I was able to break the seven figure mark partway through through the year. So that was really exciting being like midway through the year and realizing, “Oh my gosh, I’ve done it.” And what’s so funny to me, Alice, is that I initially I thought I could do it much faster. I was hoping to do it within five or six years, and that didn’t happen for me. And so I started to think about what’s the next milestone? How can I spur myself into action? And I said, I want to break this seven figure mark before I turn 40. And I hit that mark literally four days before I turned 40. So there was something about like putting it out into the universe. I might have even delayed it for myself by putting that marker as far out as I did. But I ended up manifesting it with a pretty high degree of precision.
5:38 Alice Tang: So much about setting goals. You just reminded me and setting a goal that you believe in it. Cuz we could have Alice 10 not very fit. I want to lose five pounds, but if I don’t believe I can do that, it’s something out there. But you’re not like subconsciously
6:01 Dr. Laura Gallaher: working on it cuz our mind is a crazy place.
6:04 Alice Tang: As you and our common friend would said, the subconscious mind is always working even you’re sleeping
6:10 Dr. Laura Gallaher: constantly. And it’s a huge part of our experience, much bigger part of our overall experience than the conscious piece of the experience. That’s right.
6:18 Alice Tang: That’s right. How did you combat stress which is now with driving to your area and burned out as you gain success as an entrepreneur?
6:28 Dr. Laura Gallaher: Yeah. Oh my gosh. How I was able to combat stress? The first step for me was actually recognizing how much stress I was under. Because for me, if somebody was to ask me if I was feeling stressed, I most of the time I would say like, “No, I feel I feel fine. I feel normal.” And I came to realize that for me as an entrepreneur and somebody that I feel like I’m a quote high achiever, like a lot of high achievers, I just didn’t realize that I was in stress. So Alice, have you heard that parable of the older fish that swimming by two younger fish and he says, “Morning boys. How’s the water?” And they keep swimming. And then one younger fish turns to the other one and says, “What the heck is water? because as fish they’ve never had to think of they they don’t know anything else right and I was like that is me with stress I was in such a constant state of stress that I didn’t it felt normal and so for me that was step number one was recognizing like I am in constant state of stress it’s doing a lot to my body on a regular basis it is putting strain on my mind and my brain pain and in a lot of cases it is robbing me of my joy. So once I could realize how much I was truly sitting in stress constantly, I worked to uncover what is the story in my head that’s driving this stress response because stress is actually a choice. And that really annoyed me when I learned that. But it’s true. And the deeper you get into it, the more true you see it is. And so being able to uncover the story in my head that was actually driving my stressed out reaction, I recognized I get to choose that story in my head. So is this narrative serving me well or is it actually detracting from how I want to feel and the direction I want to go.
8:34 Alice Tang: You made me think. You always do.
8:37 Dr. Laura Gallaher: Yeah,
8:37 Alice Tang: we interacted three times already and this is the third time. Every time I heard about stress is a choice and it’s the story we’re telling ourself. To me, I think the best way to deal with that stress it comes right. People said something half-heartedly. It meant nothing to anybody. It meant a lot to me, right? It’s like people coming out to get me.
9:03 Dr. Laura Gallaher: Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. That’s what it can feel like.
9:06 Alice Tang: Yes. So awareness. I love that. As you said, it’s a choice. I mean you aware of it and what are you going to do with it?
9:14 Dr. Laura Gallaher: You can go with the stories that they are coming to get me and I’ll put up my shield and my armor and maybe call my tribe which there are a lot of people will fight this or is just a story that could be edited.
9:31 Dr. Laura Gallaher: Yeah, it’s a way that I’m actually stuck in self- judgment and that self judgment is the true source of my stress. So practicing self-acceptance is the primary antidote.
9:43 Alice Tang: Self- judgment. Can we go deeper? I am in your shoes. So just open the kimono here. Anything that went wrong in my past life, I feel that I have a part to contribute especially when something bad happened.
9:59 Dr. Laura Gallaher: Yes.
10:00 Alice Tang: So is that judgment? So could you coach me?
10:03 Dr. Laura Gallaher: So, I love this because you’re asking about judgment and contribution. And I love that you’re focusing on contribution. So, one of the ways to look at this, you are contributing to every situation in your life through your action and your inaction. So, of course, you’ve contributed to every situation. So, if there’s a situation that you don’t like or you notice that you’re stressing out about it, the question is, are you judging yourself for the contribution that you’ve made to that situation or are you practicing compassion and acceptance around it? Because pragmatically, intellectually, we know that we’re not perfect. We know that we’re human and we make mistakes. But as a high achiever, as an entrepreneur, when you are making a mistake or contributing to a situation in a way that you’re like, “Oh man, that didn’t go the way I wanted it to go, do you find yourself judging yourself, beating up on yourself, or do you simply look at that and say, “What useful learning? I can see how I contributed to this going this way. Let me carry this information forward so I can make a different choice.”
11:23 Alice Tang: This is really eye opening.
11:26 Dr. Laura Gallaher: Super.
11:27 Dr. Laura Gallaher: Yeah,
11:28 Alice Tang: I’m sure our audience love to hear more about that. You also talk about creating space of connection, accountability, and celebration to come back burned out. Tell us more.
11:38 Dr. Laura Gallaher: Oh my gosh. I mean, you’re I think you’re living it, Alice. I think that you know how much connection and celebration and all of that does work to combat burnout. burnout. I’m not an expert in specifically, but unchecked stress will lead you to burn out. And what I find is that one of the biggest stressors is that story that we tell ourselves that this isn’t happening to other people. If I feel like I’m alone and I’m the only one that’s struggling with this, then my stress is going to be significantly amplified. But as soon as I’m able to be open, be real, be vulnerable, that’s how I truly connect with somebody else. And most of the time when they hear me, they have an I feel that too kind of response. And as soon as we have that connection through that authenticity and that vulnerability, our stress levels start to decrease and then we’re much less likely to burn out. And the same is true about celebration because I know that you know this Alice as high achievers, entrepreneurs, as soon as you hit a goal, you’re already thinking about the next one. You’ve it’s just a moving milestone. And so a lot of entrepreneurs don’t take the time to celebrate their progress, which research shows that when you do take the time to celebrate, you are actually changing your brain chemistry and you’re actually accelerating your growth, which means that you’re going to feel less stress and you’re way less likely to burn out. So that connection, that celebration, all of that will absolutely help you combat burnout. And so what you do, Alice, and bringing these entrepreneurs together so that they can celebrate each other and also share when things are hard. Beautiful. I’m so appreciative that there are people like you that create these kind of spaces.
13:31 Alice Tang: Laura, you are the most prepared guest I’ve ever met. I can tell that. So, no wonder you’re so successful. Let’s go back to the million. So at 8 and a half eight and a half years you hit your million. In my world because I come from the financial world, we always believe that hitting the first 100,000 a million is very difficult. We sweat, we stress. That’s why we need to see Laura or talk with her more.
14:00 Dr. Laura Gallaher: Yeah.
14:02 Alice Tang: Once we got there, honoring what Laura just taught us, celebrate so that we are less stressed. be more welcoming of a even beautiful future from the one to the two whatever one represent is less difficult because the muscles are stronger. So tell us about that. Tell us more about how you feel after the eight and a half years now that you’re 12 year.
14:27 Dr. Laura Gallaher: Mhm. I transparently I haven’t made it all the way from the one to the two. So I am still in that space of figuring out how to hit that kind of growth. But I do think that becoming a seven figureure business owner, I started to prioritize my time a lot more. So there were way too many weeks that I was working way too many hours, 50, 60, 70 hours, just depending on what was going on. I had periods in my business where I was working more like 90 to 100 hour weeks, which was absolutely unsustainable. And once I hit the seven figure mark, I actually started to prioritize instead of how can I just get more money, I said, how can I work to maintain the seven figure business but get my time back? And so I think that a lot of the last couple years for me has been more of a shift and a pivot to say how can I maintain and still grow those revenue levels but work a much more reasonable 40 to 45 hours a week. There are some exceptions but like I have gotten back more time in the last couple years because that’s what I prioritized.
15:45 Alice Tang: Money and time has a very funny relationship. If we can use money to buy time.
15:53 Dr. Laura Gallaher: Yes.
15:54 Alice Tang: And time is spent on the most exciting, healthy, lovely experience that we have. Money has its use already, right? using money cuz I’m not making money but I’m having best time at my wedding with my friends with my family visiting my grandmother whatever that is craziness for me is singing karaoke so
16:21 Dr. Laura Gallaher: fun love that
16:23 Alice Tang: I was told I should keep my daytime job but who cares they’re not paying
16:28 Dr. Laura Gallaher: I want to karaoke with you and then I will form my own opinion
16:32 Alice Tang: yes no judgment
16:35 Dr. Laura Gallaher: never
16:37 Alice Tang: Very good. Very good. I love your advice. As you’re sending back your elevator back to a younger person or a similar age person but trying to get to that million of revenue, what advice would you give them?
16:51 Dr. Laura Gallaher: So, this is likely something that your listeners have heard before and I think it bears repeating. Know your worth. My business is so much of selling my own time, selling my own expertise, selling my consulting, my coaching, and it can feel so scary to raise your rates, increase your prices, and you will get comments. People will have a reaction based on you raising your rates, raising your prices. And if you know your worth, you’re going to accelerate your journey to hit that million. Whether that’s that could be through saving, through selling, or through earning in that that annual mark. But don’t be afraid of saying a number, raising your rates to something that scares you. Or be scared, but have courage anyway.
17:48 Alice Tang: Oh, I love that. Be scared, but have that courage. I think secondguing myself if I’m your patient, my consultant here, it’s one of the things when people say no, I second guess myself. Then back to the point about that we made at the beginning of our interview. How much do you believe in that?
18:14 Alice Tang: How much do I believe in it?
18:17 Dr. Laura Gallaher: Yeah, absolutely. And it may be somebody who never spent a penny when I asked for something like $10,000 or five or even one or $100 even. They said, “Oh, it’s too expensive.”
18:30 Alice Tang: Only to you.
18:31 Dr. Laura Gallaher: Exactly. Exactly. It often means that you just haven’t found the right contact yet. And that’s okay. You will actually bring in and attract more of what you’re looking for when you know your worth and you push yourself to set your prices at a level that make you feel really good about all those hours that you put in.
18:53 Alice Tang: Know your worth and work with the people who appreciate your value.
18:58 Dr. Laura Gallaher: Yes.
18:59 Alice Tang: Very good. Very good. Last but not least, what are you grateful for?
19:07 Dr. Laura Gallaher: I am grateful for so much and what I would say is I am so grateful for the leaders in the organizations over these last 12 years who have brought us in because it can be vulnerable for these leaders to invite me in where I ask people to really step into vulnerability. There is a lot of discomfort that comes up for people as they begin to introspect and really change their relationship with themselves. And these leaders feel that sense of responsibility. And so every single one of them who has chosen to invest their time and their money and the time of all of their leaders to work with me, I am so grateful because I love what I do. I am so grateful that I love what I do and that there are people who see the value and they’ll pay me for it. Like I just I know not everybody finds that as quickly as I was able to find it for myself and every day I am grateful for that.
20:13 Alice Tang: Beautiful. We are grateful for you today. Thank you for sharing your knowledge. If uh our audience would like to find you, how do they do that?
20:22 Dr. Laura Gallaher: Yeah, thank you for having me, Alice. I I love this conversation two ways. One is that I’m on LinkedIn quite a bit, so you can look me up there, Laura Gallagher. And the other thing that I’ll offer is I mentioned the importance of self-acceptance. And if your listeners want to take our quiz, we have a free quiz at self-acceptancequiz.com. And so if you’re curious, you’re wanting to better understand what is this, its relationship with stress, all of that. They can take that no cost. they’ll get the results within about a minute and then you’re going to get some coaching emails from me. So, if that’s of interest and I would invite your listeners to check that out, too.
21:03 Alice Tang: Yes. And I’ve done that. That’s how we connected. You were kind enough to give me some tips.
21:09 Dr. Laura Gallaher: Yes. Yes. And I love that you were able to take a It’s short, right? Three to
21:16 Alice Tang: However, exactly who I am. G
21:19 Dr. Laura Gallaher: Yeah. You felt seen.
21:22 Alice Tang: Yes. It’s so naked.
21:24 Dr. Laura Gallaher: Yeah. But you’re so not alone. The results that you had are actually what I see most frequently, especially from high achievers, especially from female entrepreneurs.
21:36 Alice Tang: Yeah,
21:37 Alice Tang: we love you. Thank you so much for the time.
21:40 Dr. Laura Gallaher: Thank you for having me.
21:43 Alice Tang: It’s my pleasure.
21:44 Dr. Laura Gallaher: Appreciate you.
Dr. Laura Gallaher is a professional speaker and organizational psychologist who inspires driven self-starters to transform their relationship with themselves to accomplish more than ever while making everything easier! She is an approachable, funny, warm, alluring, optimistic, curious, and delightful speaker and guest!
Dr. Laura uniquely leverages humor to resonate with audiences while sharing revelations on radical self-acceptance. Even as a USA Today and Wall Street Journal Best-selling author, Dr. Laura does not fit the typical “academic” personality of her PhD peers.
Her noteworthy achievements include being hired by NASA to transform culture following the Columbia accident, working with Disney to lead radical shifts in performance management for their leaders, and inspiring Yahoo’s global teams to seek transformation from the inside-out.
When she is not serving a mass self-acceptance movement, you can find her water skiing, floating in a sunny pool (likely on a large peacock floatie), playing with her dogs (Grace, a Papillon, and Jackson, a Morkie), singing while playing her grand piano, or diving deeper into her own consciousness.
Dr. Laura has been featured on: SXSWL, Forbes, Psychology Today, HuffPost, and TEDx.