Full Transcript

Darren [00:00:01]:
Hi everyone. Welcome back to another episode of One of One. I’m your host, Darren Gold, CEO of the Trium Group. My guest today is Laela Sturdy, Managing partner of CapitalG, Alphabet’s independent growth fund. Laela is one of the few women to lead an established multibillion dollar venture firm, leading investments in companies like Stripe, Duolingo, Gusto and uipath. In this conversation, we talk about Laela’s childhood, the role that being captain of the Harvard women’s basketball team played in her leadership, and the importance of fun and joy in creating true followership. Laela brings us into the unique way she leads a CapitalG, including how to have fun in an investment committee meeting and how she has been able to develop uniquely deep relationships with some of the most iconic founders of the last decade. Please enjoy my incredible conversation with Laela Sturdy. Laela, I am so excited to be in this conversation with you. Thank you so much for being here, Darren.

Laela [00:01:11]:
It’s a pleasure. I am so excited to see you and looking forward to the conversation.

Darren [00:01:16]:
Yeah, me too. Me too. I thought we’d start with present day and your role as Managing Partner CEO of CapitalG. For those of our listeners who don’t know who CapitalG is, can you tell us a little bit about CapitalG and what your role is there?

Laela [00:01:30]:
Absolutely. So CapitalG is a growth investment fund. We invest in growth stage technology companies and we are backed by Alphabet and Google. Alphabet and Google are a single lp, but we are financial investors, so we invest for financial return in generational technology companies. And the unique aspect of our firm is that because Alphabet and Google are a single lp, we can take advantage of the amazing advisors and network and data and perspectives inside of Google and Alphabet to inform our investment decisions and more importantly, to help our companies post investment to really scale and grow. And we tend to take quite sizable positions. We typically invest 50 to 200 million in each company and partner for the long haul. So we try to find them in the early growth stage when they’re Series B or C and invest a significant amount of capital and work with those companies over many of them. It’s been a decade plus now and my role as managing partner, I’ve been with the firm almost since we started and was a general partner for a long time. So I led a lot of our investments in companies like UiPath and Stripe Duolingo. And then about 18 months ago I took over the role as Managing Partner CEO. So now I’m in charge of the firm’s overall strategy, recruiting people, the team, building out our partnership, and just continuing to do what we love, which is find amazing companies and be great partners to them and return best in class returns to Google and Alphabet.

Darren [00:03:02]:
You’re in this amazing sort of dual role in some ways, sort of like I am where you’re running and leading a firm, but you’re also, you’ve got a front row seat to some amazing founders and CEOs. And so you’ve been able to get to know and observe and learn from some incredible CEOs. And I want to dive into both of those things. But I want to start with you as a leader. And a question I was thinking about. Was there a moment in time when you first discovered, hey, I’ve got something special, something that feels like I should be leading something, and if so, when and where were you when that happened?

Laela [00:03:34]:
Yeah, well, I’ve always loved teams. I mean, I come from a big family. I have three sisters, so I have one of four kids. We always, I was always organizing games on my block growing up and I’ve always had a lot of energy, so wanted to get out there and do physical activities and mental activities and have fun. And my first love was basketball. So I started, I fell in love with basketball when I was at about third grade and I was lucky enough to play all the way up through college basketball. So I played on teams my whole life. And that was probably, it was pretty early on in those experiences, I think, that I didn’t know what it was called, but I learned about leadership. I knew what it meant to think about my own performance on the court and the type of people that I wanted to be on teams with and how to lead by example, how to push and be pushed, how to get up after adversity. So I would say early on, and I was captain of my high school team, I was captain of my college team. So I think I naturally gravitated towards some of those leadership positions in sports. And I think that’s helped me a great deal in business as well as I’ve. Early on in my career I started managing people. I always loved managing people and I just saw the opportunity that leadership can have in just making my own life richer. And I love seeing other people around me thrive and grow. And I have that interest in people and I have that interest in teams winning. So I think that’s been a lot of what’s driven me in my past.

Darren [00:05:02]:
So you mentioned getting the best out of yourself and getting the best out of others. So what is it about you? Like, what’s the quality that makes you good at doing that?

Laela [00:05:11]:
I think there’s a number of aspects. I think one of them is self awareness. I think I’ve always, you know, I’ve always been a seeker. Since I was a little kid. I’ve always had a part of me that has wanted to understand myself, wanted to understand the world, like, what’s going on around me, why to what makes clocks tick and why do I tick. And I think that level of sort of introspection and awareness and willingness to change and desire to grow is something that I think is part of my core essence. I’ve been to a lot of places, and I think as a kid, I mean, I was born in Jamaica. My parents immigrated to the States when I was a little kid. And so I was always used to a lot of different cultures, different experiences. And I started off my career in the nonprofit sector, worked Google as an operator, moved to investing. So I’ve always been very driven by continuous learning and very open to change and newness. And I think that that’s just a part of me that I would say I really know about myself and probably my friends and colleagues would say about me as well. And I think it’s something that’s made venture and technology a good fit for me. Honestly, there’s not many industries that the pace of change is anything close to technology and then venture. The nature of the variety and the newness has been a really good fit for my personality and the things I love to do.

Darren [00:06:38]:
When I speak to people who know you, there’s something about their attraction. They want to follow you. And it’s such an important aspect of leadership, is followership. And so I’m just. I’m also, like, thinking about, okay, you were captain of the women’s basketball team at Harvard. I mean, that’s pretty amazing. And I just like to, like, bring us into the locker room, the court. Who is Laela in that situation? Why are people attracted to you? Why are they following you?

Laela [00:07:04]:
Yeah, well, thanks for saying that, Darren. Okay, well, the inside scoop is a core value of mine, is I like to have fun. I definitely think this is really important. And I love laughing. I love. I try to take myself not too seriously. I love other people that don’t take themselves too seriously. They take the task seriously. Basketball was a good example to explain that. It’s like, I really cared about winning. My teammates really cared about winning. But we also had so much fun in the locker room. I mean, we teased each other. We were able to just get all of this expression and energy and life force out into the world and with each other. And I think that helped propel the intensity that we could bring on the basketball court and the sort of unity. So I think that’s a core aspect of what I have just brought to other aspects of leadership as well, because it’s also just very much who I am. I think you hear I try to run, for example, the funniest investment committee in Silicon Valley within our investment team. And I don’t really try. I just am myself. And I want to have fun doing what I’m doing. I care deeply about what I’m doing, and I have a very serious side to myself. The role is very serious. The world is very serious, but the world is also very joyful and fun. So I think that’s one aspect about me that I think drives followership. Another aspect is that I really do care about people. I mean, I really. Relationships are the most important thing to me. They always have been my family, my friends, growing up, and that’s continued to be the most important thing in my life, in my professional career. So I’m loyal to people, I’m honest with them, and I really want to see them succeed. And I love being a leader of a venture capital firm for that reason, because we’re so lucky that we can recruit such exceptional talent. Because people want to work in venture, they want to work in tech. It’s a very rewarding intellectual career, interpersonal career. Financially, there are so many reasons to want to work here. And I see it as exciting to also build the best culture where we have the best team and we support one another and we bring out the best in each other. And so I try to lead by example for the people that work for me. I do really deeply care about them and hopefully it shows. And I think that contributes to followership and enables us to really build the best team out there.

Darren [00:09:38]:
Okay, so first of all, you’ve raised the bar for this conversation because we better have some fun doing it. All right, so we’re going to be serious and playful, but it is.

Laela [00:09:47]:
We’ll insert jokes after if we can’t do it real time.

Darren [00:09:50]:
Yes, we’ll be careful. But this polarity of being serious and playful and integrating the two, it just. It’s really unique and I’m so glad we touched on it. I’d also love to like. So I can see that on the basketball court. Right. I can almost imagine you with your teammates dancing and having fun. And what I loved about it was like bringing life energy out. I mean, that is the source of all creation and getting anything Good, Accomplished. Right. Is energy. How does that show up in an investment committee meeting at CapitalG without getting into anything confidential, like what is, what does that look like? What’s the form of that?

Laela [00:10:26]:
Yeah, well, I think it’s just the idea that sort of any meeting can be fun. And to me it’s like, what are the aspects that make it fun? First of all, it’s having that personal connection with walking with the people in the room. So when I walk in a room and again, this isn’t something I pre rehearse or really even thought about. But naturally I’m going to say, hey, how was your weekend? What did you do? I try to keep up with the lives of the people on my team. And the same, I try to share what’s going on with me, make a joke about the reality of life with three young children, which is they’re getting a bit older now, but certainly when they were really little, it was a race to the office Monday morning to get a bit of a break and to share snippets and just interact with people on a really personal basis. I think another aspect of making an investment committee real and connected and both fun and meaningful also is being able to share with humility the lessons we’ve learned along the way. So that’s something that I really try to model for my team and some of the other great investors. Darren Eugene France, my longtime partner here, amazing person, amazing investor, incredible track record and he and I can easily integrate as we’re talking about a company currently, the mistakes we made, which are as important, if not more important than the successes that we’ve had on things we’ve missed or things we’ve got wrong and do it in a self deprecating way or way that that can add some lightness to it. So the newer team members who maybe are making this, this might be the first deal they’re bringing to investment committee and the seriousness with which they feel can’t be overestimated. Those times when you’re an ambitious person and you feel like this matters so much that you get it right to see other people around you modeling with the same level of rigor. Yeah, we’re super serious. We’re gonna ask you all the really hard questions about this investment. We’re gonna push on your numbers, we’re gonna push on your thinking, but we’re also gonna bring some hu to what we missed and some light on what we got right along the way and just relax the conversation a little bit so it’s as rigorous. But anxiety and Individual tension. So that would be an example to me on how you try to integrate it all.

Darren [00:12:43]:
Yeah, you’re really bringing it to life. And the picture of how you’re creating followership is coming to life. And I want to pull on a couple more threads, but I do want to go on the record and just say, yes, Jean France is an amazing human being.

Laela [00:12:53]:
Jean France fan club, right here.

Darren [00:12:54]:
I’ll put that out there and on the air for sure. I’m also curious. Some of the people that sing your praises the most are these incredible founders that you’ve had the privilege and opportunity to partner with. And I’m wondering how you are in those situations, because you’re building relationship. I imagine you’re bringing some playfulness into those in a way that helps you cement relationships. That gives you a bit of an edge in a pretty competitive investing world.

Laela [00:13:24]:
Yeah. So that my relationships with the founders that I’ve worked with has been one of the most rewarding things about working in venture the last 10 plus years. So obviously the relationships with my team and to me, the founders are part of that team. And so it’s incredibly important that those relationships are deep and authentic and that we’re both, we’re invested in each other personally, professionally, and that I view my role as an investor and a board member to be incredibly supportive to the founder and to the management team. But to me, support also means challenge. It means helping. Helping bring the hard questions, push and voice what I see as concerns or opportunities. And so that has been super rewarding because founders and CEOs of growth stage companies have incredibly challenging jobs. I mean, these men and women are like, we’re working nonstop. Their businesses are scaling so rapidly. Because these are the lucky ones. I mean, we’re lucky at CapitalG. We get to invest in the very best companies and we see the privilege and the opportunity there. And what that means, extraordinary scaling challenges, building the teams, strategic opportunities. You’re starting to way beyond early startup and product market fit. Now you’re taking on the big incumbents in your industry and trying to recruit the very best talent in the world. So these are sort of enormous challenges that are nonstop. And so one of the ways that I’ve tried to be supportive is first of all to be really let my founders know how much I care about them. These are people that have really hard jobs and don’t always have a ton of emotional support and a ton of people that say, hey, I see you, I see all you’re doing and all that you’re balancing. And I’M appreciative of that and I think you’re doing a fantastic job. And here are some of the other things that I think you need to watch out for or pay attention to. So I think what I’ve loved is I care about deep and real relationships. And so if I’m investing my professional and my, therefore my life force into these relationships, I’ll bring the same thing that I bring in any relationship I have, which is that full energy and care and transparency. And it’s been awesome. I mean, I feel like that to feel even just to be a small part of a board member of some of these amazing success stories and to know the history of it have been there, like through the hard times, especially the times we thought, hey, we actually might run out of money or we actually might get crushed by this big competitive or shoot, we can’t recruit the level of talent we need in some C level spot. And then to get through that and come on the other side, it’s just the joy of what we get to do in growth stage investing, which is that mix of like reality with the impossible. But you get front row seats to stuff that really shouldn’t have happened. And that’s what’s beautiful about entrepreneurship and creation. And when you know the people and you care about them and you played some small role in supporting them, it’s really, it’s addictive. It’s really fun and addictive. And the time has flown by in the decade, classic CapitalG. For that.

Darren [00:16:35]:
Reason you’ve mentioned relationships now and the depth of relationships that’s so important to you and makes you effective and so important to you as a person and as a leader. I’ve been on the receiving end of that desire to get to know people at a deep level that you have. And I want to sort of turn the tables a little bit bit because you mentioned a unique childhood, a childhood being born in Jamaica, coming to the States. I’m a big believer that our childhood, our formative experiences shape who we wind up being. And a lot of those things really serve us and a lot of those things can get in our way. So I’m interested to get a sense of what shaped you and how you’ve begun to through your own self awareness, understand that.

Laela [00:17:16]:
Yeah, absolutely. Oh, gosh. So many things. Darren, how much time do you have here?

Darren [00:17:20]:
Much time as you want.

Laela [00:17:21]:
Yeah, and I might need a pillow and a couch, but so many things. I mean, I love my parents and I was fortunate enough to have two parents that loved me and my sisters so much. Yeah. And they were both immigrants coming with their own story. So I think what I’ve learned about my childhood, I know in the early years, there was not a lot of financial security in my family. So my dad was a bit in and out of different jobs. My mom left. My mom grew up in England. Working class England. She left home when she was 16 and got a job. Never asked her once, mom, did you ever think of going to university? And she said, just women and people with our economic means didn’t even think of it then. So, amazingly, side note, my mom put herself back through college when we were little. When my sister entered kindergarten, she got a scholarship to community college and got a math degree. So she is one of my heroes. So they were scrappy, hardworking, but not always a sense of security. So I remember early, some of the patterns that shaped me is thinking as a pretty young, I took on a pretty responsible edge. I was like, okay, I’m going to help my parents. I’m going to help make sure my family’s okay. I’m going to make sure we have financial security. And so I remember from a very young age starting to pay attention, like, looking up and saying, okay, like, how do schools work? And what do I need to do to get good grades, to get scholarships? And does my mom seem stressed? And what do I need to do to take care of her? So I definitely developed some. I think I later read in a psychology book somewhere, parentified child or some term like that. Darren, you can help me understand fully what that is later. But let’s say some of it definitely resonated. And then I started to see, oh, wow, this gives. It gives me a lot of rewards in the world out there as well. Like, hey, turns out, getting good grades in school, teachers like you, and all of that. So I was definitely one of those kids that sort of followed the rules, worked hard, tried to take care of things a little bit, probably younger than I should have. And I think then I. Other side of me, Darren. I remember when we were talking once about the parts work and the Walt Whitman quote, I am multitudes. I definitely can relate to that because I had a huge sort of rebel part of me as well. And that was, I think, a little bit more of my dreamer part. I started traveling by myself quite young. Like when I was about 18, I decided I wanted to go to West Africa. I went to Senegal and the Gambia. A couple years later, I went to Kenya and Uganda and backpacked all through Africa. I backpacked through Asia, always traveling solo. So or not always, but a lot of times for long periods traveling solo. So I had this other part of me that was sort of very adventurous, that was quite introspective and wanted to see the world, wanted to understand things and kind of created space away from some of that responsibility and some of the kind of achievement cultures to reflect a little bit more. So those are two threads of the many that I think influenced me. But overall some of that hardship in childhood was matched by like a very loving family, really dedicated to relationships. And so I think that’s a lot of the thread that also has, you know, is a huge part of who I am and shapes some of our earlier conversation as well.

Darren [00:20:44]:
Yeah, I think it’s such an important part of leadership is to understand people at that level. I think we can cast off these sort of childhood experiences as being indulgent. I think they’re so rich and so important. So I hear your story about somebody who had to grow up really responsible and self sufficient with a little bit of financial insecurity. And I share many of those things. And what we learn about ourselves is that those things can massively serve us. I’m also curious, where have those, some of those things had some shadow gotten in your way and how have you managed to address those?

Laela [00:21:19]:
Yeah, so well, Darren, thanks to people like you and Katherine and all the amazing folks at Trium and friends that are interested in this type of work. Yeah, I have done a lot of introspection around those questions and I definitely am one of those people that believe your strength and your shadows are kind of the same thing. Like how do you look and sort of say thank you for how that, that served me and then how is it holding you back and where do I need to examine? So I’d say some of the shadows of that. I mean the hyper responsible one who sees a challenge and wants to take it on and take care of it. There’s obvious challenges to that, around not needing to at times and stepping back and letting others step up and sharing some of that responsibility and leadership. I think there’s. There’s a little bit of an under. I think a childhood anxiety that comes from that too. When you were young and you had to sort of take care of a lot of things. I think I am lucky that I have something deep in me that is playful and lighthearted because I think that is a. Bringing that responsible, more anxious one is a sort of counterbalance to that. So there are times that sometimes when the responsible one takes over, I do need to just, just be A little less anxious overall, like it doesn’t matter too much. There’s a, I think a critic, a high standards part in there. That again I think has been really helpful to me. That gets you through working, consulting high pressure tech, just the world that we’re in but at times can drive a team too hard or feel like we’re all in a rat race where nothing is good enough. So I really try to pay attention to the shadow side of that and myself and just the cultures that we operate in at CapitalG and beyond of just a high performance culture to encourage myself and others to make sure we’re celebrating and enjoying the ride as much as we should because it’s, it’s an amazing opportunity that we have every day and the work is so rewarding and fun and interesting that I think, you know, really awareness around these shadows to fully live in the presence and fully live in all that abundance is hard to do and, but certainly something that I’m focused on.

Darren [00:23:36]:
Yeah, you mentioned self awareness and growth and it’s pretty evident how that shows up for you and how you lead through a lot of complexity both leading yourself and leading others. And I wanted to move us back to the current moment at CapitalG. You have this incredible responsibility to lead what I think is one of the best venture firms in the world. And I’m curious to understand. You’ve described some of your style and philosophy, particularly around seriousness and playfulness, your or the other polarity of challenge and support, particularly in your work with founders. I’m sure that extends to your team as well. What is the kind of X factor? If there was something maybe a little bit different or additive that you would add that makes you the obvious person, which I think you are, to lead this firm. What is that? And then I’m also interested in the thing you’re working on the most and the thing that most challenges you in this role as CEO because it’s such a unique, demanding role.

Laela [00:24:30]:
Yeah, good questions, Darren. So you know the other polarity that’s coming to mind or the other important attribute I think of leading a venture firm in particular as opposed to even just as an operator for a long time. So I’ve led lots of different teams across like general management, CEO, sales, marketing strategy, all that kind of stuff. What I think is particularly important in venture is that you have these really smart, really high achieving, ambitious people that understand technology, can analyze data back, forward and in all directions and so incredible intellect, incredible hustle. And then at the end of the day, the most important thing that we’re doing is deciding yes or no on an investment. And that is extraordinarily hard, especially when you’re investing these sums of capital that we’re investing. So we’re investing 50 to 150 million in each of these investment decisions. That feels like that’s an enormous, that’s the seriousness of what we do. It’s a big capital, a big bet on that partnership. And it’s a unique blend that you have to say yes or to say no to these decisions because it’s a binary decision. But you have so many different data points. And so you have to find and coach people into being able to deal with this overload and complexity, to not be like analysis paralysis or overloaded by their own intellect, to be able to focus on the most important factors on the sort of intellectual side and the data side. So prioritize what are the most important factors to sort of say yes or no and then be able to balance their sense of intuition and risk. Because nothing is certain. Like if it was certain, we’d be investing in 5% growers, companies at the end of their life. Like you’re investing by nature. There’s a lot of risk in the pace of change in technology and the stage of company that we’re investing in. And so that’s another sort of, I think really important part of leadership in venture is being able to model and coach people towards confidence in their own decisions in that way. But then also to have guardrails where everybody shouldn’t be confident, if that makes sense. Some people might not be ready to make those type of decisions. Or you, the, the, you have to build processes in the firm so that there’s, there’s good checks and balances on how people are assessing risk and sort of making those decisions and then modeling for these high achievement. Often people that are, are very achievement oriented how they deal with failure and mistakes. Because when you’re in a risk business, you’re going to have a lot of those. And so that is another just aspect of leadership that I, that I spend quite a lot of time thinking about. Because I think it’s incredibly important as we build this firm that we take the right level of risk and that we’re balancing that final decision making in the right way, both individually and systematically across the firm. And then we mentor people to be able to get there and we find people that have that courage, that have that intuition along with the intellect to drive rigor in the right decisions.

Darren [00:27:46]:
So I’m hearing you do that particularly well. I’m Imagining no one’s perfect at it. And your ability to both demand that coach people and identify people with that talent is a strength of yours.

Laela [00:27:58]:
Oh, I’m certainly focused on it. Yeah. So let’s. We’ll say it’s a strength.

Darren [00:28:02]:
I’m going to say it’s a strength.

Laela [00:28:04]:
Thanks, Darren.

Darren [00:28:05]:
And what about the thing you’re working on? What is it that gets in your way that you’re challenged by, particularly in the role of leading?

Laela [00:28:11]:
Yeah. So even as I say I do it and I do it giving the hard message and confronting hard situations, whether that’s thinking this week, I won’t go into the specifics, but a difficult situation with a founder where I think some misunderstandings with the board this or that, I still, I’m such a people person, I still get a clench in my gut when I know someone’s upset, particularly if I think they there’s a misunderstanding or something. And somehow Darren, I always get volunteered to be the board representative to go and have these difficult conversations. So this week was no exception. My lovely fellow board members. So, you know, it’s still hard, right? It’s still hard to go in there and confront the issues head on. And I do it and I certainly talk about to others coaching them to do it. But I notice still in my own body, in my own experience sense that it’s still hard. It’s still hard to take the hardest issues head on, to risk being misunderstood, particularly that one for me is a, you know, is a hook. And so something I’m working on is to look forward to being misunderstood, to look forward to just the discomfort of that, to notice it more. And I know as I do that I will keep leaning into the hard and the riskier and model it for myself and others more and more beyond.

Darren [00:29:40]:
Your own self awareness of what’s getting in the way of being like really skillful. Right at that. And I imagine you already are. There’s something else you mentioned which was I noticed it in my body and very few CEOs I hear use that language. And I think in large part because we’re as a generalization, disembodied. So I want to just touch on that because I think it’s such an important aspect of leadership that doesn’t get talked frequently enough about. And so tell me why you said that and what that actually means for you as you think about your own leadership.

Laela [00:30:12]:
You needed more basketball playing CEOs, Darren. See, we’ve noticed the importance of the body for a long time. I mean, that is kidding Aside, that is, yeah, I’ve. That’s been part of the work Katherine from Triumph has helped me so much with and that I’ve done my own sort of inquiry around is understanding all the different forms of intelligence, the mind, the body, the heart and just noticing it more and using it to inform how you lead in any situation. So I think it’s interesting. I agree most CEOs would never mention paying attention to body intelligence, but when you talk to athletes or many other leaders in sort of peak performance or peak flow oriented achievement descriptions of themselves or their experience, like the body is included so often. So it’s. I’m by no expert in this. I’m still in the same delighted boardrooms with everybody else. But it is certainly something that I enjoy learning more about and sort of paying attention to. And as I think about my own aspirations to keep growing as a leader, I’ll take any forms of intelligence I could get. So to help along the way.

Darren [00:31:24]:
It’s such an enormous body of intelligence or field of intelligence that we neglect and I love the fact that you mentioned, you know, high performance athletes and theater performers and people that really understand how important it is to look at the body first because it gives you so many different signals and I think such an important part of leadership. As you think about great leaders, leaders that you’ve worked with, leaders that you admire, people that are no longer living. Is there a particular leader that inspires you that you look to and say gosh, that’s a deep source of inspiration for me.

Laela [00:31:57]:
Gosh, I have so many. Because I also think that great leaders, so many great leaders. In my experience there’s something that’s so spiky about them. There’s one attribute that you’re like, oh my goodness. You know, I think of the CEOs that I’ve worked with, like Daniel Dines at UiPath, he had so he has so much courage. Like I really looked at him as someone that he made some incredibly courageous decisions and bets that I learned so much from. Luis von Ahn at Duolingo is the best product intuition and sort of user intuition of any inventor or creator that I’ve worked with. And to see him apply that in a field as important as learning and his sort of obsession with the mission of it as well. Another incredibly spiky out like I think standard deviations, multiple standard deviations away difference from so many other people is that mission driven element that he had to see those two things firsthand. Drive the creation of Duolingo has just been incredible. My College basketball coach, one of the funniest people I’ve ever met. She first showed me, like, you can do this and laugh. You can take yourself a little less seriously. And I didn’t know what it was at the time. I just knew I wanted to be there. And when I reflect back, I think, okay, one of the reasons I wanted to be there is because it was so much fun. And it wasn’t just. Just us as teammates having fun. She was having fun with us. So it is. It’s hard for me to pick one thing. I mentioned my mom earlier, like, back of my mom going back to community college, like this immigrant, all these kids, economic uncertainty. She enrolls herself and gets a scholarship, Broward Community College, study math. And she was. Was on her way. She ended up getting a master’s degree. She would have done a PhD, but she got pregnant and had my little sister, which. Love you, Lex. Even better. So there’s so many people that I look to and say, wow, thank you for being an inspiration. I think I often say when I’m leading my team on different things, let’s get the bunny that’s. Or whatever, the chasing, you know, and races they have. Whoever you’re chasing, they’re not going to complete the whole race. But you want someone to chase. And I often think about attributes in that way. None of us can be all of it. But how do we chase? How do we try to have the courage of Daniel with the grit of my mom with.

Darren [00:34:27]:
Yeah, yeah.

Laela [00:34:28]:
And so that’s how I’ve thought about leadership inspiration for myself.

Darren [00:34:34]:
Amazing. Yeah. Let’s go to playfulness. And I’m also thinking about you as a mom, as a wife, as a sister, as a friend. And I wanted to maybe just have you bring us into your personal life. Like, what do you do to nurture this need for playfulness and joy in your life?

Laela [00:34:52]:
Yeah, I want to just go for it. I play a lot and I laugh a lot. So I. My wife and I like to play pickleball, so we’ve gotten on that train. My wife’s a musician, singer, songwriter, so she has always, I feel so grateful, brought so much music and artistic and creative energy and community into our lives. So we’re often playing music or playing games. We are outside a lot. I mean, nature is an incredibly important part of my life. I’ve, like, made a lot of decisions to be. To try to have proximity to nature, be more structural in my life so that I can experience it more, because I really do need that mix of sort of calmness and solitude and expansiveness mixed in with the more frenetic busy go that if left unchecked, I think it wouldn’t be the complete me if I let that kind of take over. So I have to. Nature is one of the ways that I really find that balance. So that’s, I mean, to make it real, real. I mean, last night I’m like teaching my seven year old, which is a little late, sorry, jj, how to ride a bike, but we got a little busy and she’s the third kid, but I was teaching on a flat road with Mount Tam in the background. Bolinas Lagoon. The birds flying like crazy because the whales have been swimming close to the coast. And the advantage of waiting till she’s seven is she got it real fast. So she also had a boost of confidence. So that was 7:30 to 8:30 last night and maybe sums it all up.

Darren [00:36:28]:
Yeah. Note to parents, wait a little while. It’s so much easier.

Laela [00:36:32]:
Totally. Yeah.

Darren [00:36:33]:
And the third kids always get the best.

Laela [00:36:35]:
Why fight with your 3 or 4 year old about whether it’s the bike or their balance? Just wait. Everyone wins.

Darren [00:36:41]:
Parenting is also, I think, a masterclass in leadership.

Laela [00:36:44]:
Right.

Darren [00:36:44]:
You have three children, a very complex, busy, wonderful life. What is it that you’ve learned about yourself, about how to lead by being a parent that you think is worth sharing?

Laela [00:36:55]:
Wow. The ultimate in humility. And also, yeah. Unconditional love. You sort of see, wow, what is it to love so unconditionally? I mean, that has been both a beautiful thing and it’s a heartbreaking thing. Because you care about them so much. Yeah. I think what have I learned? I mean, My oldest is 13 now, so I am starting to get into the segment of life where feedback goes in both directions, which I have appreciated. I actually feel like the work that I’ve done a lot of it professionally in coaching and figuring out with adults how to learn feedback, how to do the self awareness it has readied me for when my 13 year old tells me what’s going on and who I actually am. So in all seriousness, I’ve been, I’ve learned a lot from my kids. Like the older ones of 3, 13, 12 and 7 are starting to give me feedback and have direct back and forth. And of course when they’re younger and still my youngest, it’s just about really masterclass in sort of individualism, like letting them be their true selves and noticing my own projections, noticing what the world may want or not want them to be, learning that you really can control a lot Less than you hope. And then there’s a lot of joy. I mean, seeing if I know when I’m really present, like, re seeing. I mean, my daughter make me cry here. I make myself cry. At the end of the podcast, watching a little girl learn to ride a bike. I mean, it’s like. Like, it’s incredible. You remember the first time you ride a bike or you rode a bike. Many of us will always remember that. And so I had that thought last night as I was teaching her, and I’m like, what a beautiful setting. And your confidence is so high. Your blue helmet matches. Your blue bike matches, your blue Stitch Crocs, like there’s nothing wrong with the world. And there you go.

Darren [00:38:54]:
I hope people listening to this are getting a sense of why you have such deep followership and are such a wonderful leader. For those of you that are listening and looking to Laela, hopefully as a role model, anything else that you might share that we haven’t discussed as we wrap things up here that’s important to you that you’d want to share?

Laela [00:39:15]:
Well, I feel some gratitude to you, Darren. Like, we’ve. I’ve enjoyed our evolving friendship the last couple of years. And so what’s coming to me is just the importance of friends and community in this journey, especially when you’re trying to balance family and work and. Wow. I know for so many people and for parts of my life, in balancing those where I didn’t spend as much time as I should have with my friends and getting that support and challenging each other to keep growing and to know people with that longevity through those years, it’s just so, so important. I mean, I have a women’s group that are friends of mine from business school. We graduated Stanford in 2004. So 20 years, we’ve met every month, and it’s been. They’re incredible. They’re such important relationships to me, and we’ve witnessed each other and supported each other through so many periods. And I guess I’m getting old. 46, but I really feel the importance of those friendships. So that’s the only thing else I would highlight, inspired by talking to you, Darren.

Darren [00:40:27]:
It’s wonderful to hear. Well, I’ve heard a lot of wisdom, a lot of seriousness, a lot of playfulness in this conversation, but the thing that’s coming through clearly for me is a lot of love. And it’s a word I think is, again, not frequently used in these kinds of conversations. But if I were to guess what your X factor is, it’s that. And maybe we wrap on that note that you’ve inspired me to share that I so appreciated you in this conversation and sharing what you’ve shared, and I just want to thank you again.

Laela [00:40:57]:
Thank you, my friend Darren. Really appreciate it.

Darren [00:40:59]:
You’re very welcome. Wow. What a wonderful conversation with an incredible leader. I hope you were able to appreciate Leila’s unique style and authenticity and to see how much that has contributed to her success and deep followership. I look forward to being with you on the next episode of One of One. And in the meantime, I hope you live and lead with courage, wisdom, and above all, with love.

One of One is produced by Erica Gerard and Podkit Productions. Music by John LaSala.