Business Innovators Radio - Interview with Gail Kulas CEO of Leading to Unlock & Author of Your Life on a Sticky Note

Episode Date: October 17, 2024

Gail R. Kulas, self-described as an “itchy sweater” – helping people become more comfortable being uncomfortable – is a dynamic force in the world of business strategy, education, and personal development. As the founder of Leading to Unlock, LLC, Gail has dedicated her career to unlocking the potential within individuals and organizations, delivering over $75 million in project benefits to date.With an impressive academic background, Gail holds a Bachelor of Science in Executive Management, a Master of Science in Communication & Information Management, and an MBA in Entrepreneurship & Innovative Practices. Her expertise is further bolstered by an array of certifications, including Six Sigma Black Belt, ISO 9000 Lead Assessor & Auditor, Change Manager, Coach, and LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® facilitator.Gail’s professional journey spans diverse industries, including retail, financial services, aerospace, and manufacturing. Her experience at The LEGO Group as a Senior Manager of Business Excellence and Continuous Improvement Consultant showcases her ability to drive strategic initiatives and foster organizational growth. Her innovative approach, integrating “play” into business through the LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® methodology, has resulted in better solutions and buy-in at all levels of organizations.Currently, Gail serves as an Assistant Professor of Business at CT State College-Northwestern, where she educates students in Strategic Management, Human Resource Best Practices, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Change Management, Critical Thinking, and Problem-Solving. In her consulting workshops, she playfully introduces herself as the CFO – Chief Fun Officer – reflecting her belief that learning and growth should be engaging and enjoyable.Gail’s contributions have not gone unnoticed. She has received numerous accolades, including the VIP Woman of the Year by the National Association of Professional Women, the Pinnacle Professional Award by the Continental Who’s Who Organization, and the Bay Path University Young Alum Leadership Award.Beyond her professional accomplishments, Gail is passionate about empowering others. She previously led the Women’s Employee Resource Group at ING (now Voya) and continues to be an advocate for women in business.Despite her extensive experience and accolades, Gail remains approachable and down-to-earth. An introvert at heart, she understands the importance of balancing public engagements with quiet reflection time. This self-awareness informs her teaching and consulting approach, allowing her to connect with people where they are and create a comfortable space for growth and learning.Gail’s toolbox is “vast and wide,” filled with strategies and techniques she’s eager to share. She believes in the power of unlocking potential from within and sees herself not as a salesperson but as a guide ready to help those who seek her expertise.Learn More: https://leadingtounlock.com/Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saundershttps://businessinnovatorsradio.com/influential-entrepreneurs-with-mike-saunders/Source: https://businessinnovatorsradio.com/interview-with-gail-kulas-ceo-of-leading-to-unlock-author-of-your-life-on-a-sticky-note

Welcome to influential entrepreneurs, bringing you interviews with elite business leaders and experts, sharing tips and strategies for elevating your business to the next level. Here's your host, Mike Saunders. Hello and welcome to this episode of influential entrepreneurs. This is Mike Saunders, the authority positioning coach. Today we have with us, Gail Kulis, who's the CEO of Leading to Unlock and the author of Your Life on a sticky note. Gail, welcome to the program. Thank you, Mike. Thanks for having me.

So I'm excited to hear about your book and the reasoning behind your life on a sticky note because that's curious and that's interesting. And it kind of gives me the initial idea of clarity and brevity. And we can put our life on a 400-page manifesto, but who's going to refer back to that? But if your life's on a sticky note, boom, boom, boom, you're getting things done. So I'm excited to hear about what. all that means, but get it started first with your story, your background, and what led you to want to write a book like this? Well, thanks for asking the question.

One of the things that happened was I, at the age of 20, was a single mom and had to move back with my parents. And nobody really wants to do that, but sometimes you have to. And when I started that journey, I had to figure out where I was going to go. and how I was going to support my daughter. So I picked up a piece of paper. We didn't have sticky notes back then. So I picked up a piece of paper and started taping things to the wall on where my,

what, you know, skills I had. What would somebody be looking for? How was I going to support my daughter moving forward? How was I going to make some money? So that's where the sticky note concept started. And over the last 20 or 30 years as I worked for corporate administration, America, you know, learned about process improvement, got a few degrees. I had been mapping that process out all the way through those 20 years.

And the reason I using sticky notes and I titled my book this way is because you can move them around and adjust them. So it allows some flexibility in your planning. And it also adds color and excitement. and, you know, shaping as you move forward. And the book gives you 12 practical exercises to do that. And to your point, it's not a 700-page manifesto. It's really easy, tactile, and move forward plan.

And it's a tool. I love it. And one thing that comes to mind when you were mentioning that is during your research for the book, did you find anything related to what I'm remembering way back in the day of like if you go to a seminar and you listen to it, you're going to retain X percent of that. But if you listen to it and you take notes, then you're going to retain a bigger percent. So it seems to me like the actual act of taking a pen and paper and writing things down

or a sticky note and the actual writing things down really solidifies it. So does that help kind of in some of your research? Did you find that? And that's one of the reasons why you do sticky notes versus just type on a keyboard. Yeah, absolutely. Pen to paper is, you know, it involves a couple different pieces of your brain, but to your point, we're more likely to move forward with an action when we write it down. So that is also part of that, part of that journey is learning about ourselves, how do we learn, what's the best way to hold ourselves accountable, how do we move forward?

And putting a sticky note on a wall, it tends to remind you. and keeps you focused. If you mentioned your professional career, what are some of the things you drew from that, draw from that, and then how does creativity play into really maintaining excellence and achieving those goals? Because that's one of the things with this system here

of sticky notes that you can pick and move in colors and that it's really a creative tactile process. So what are some of those lessons you learned and gleaned from corporate life? Yeah, so my corporate life, well, I would say it started. with my mom, I was never allowed to complain unless I had alternative solutions. So that's kind of in my DNA. The other piece to this is, is in my career, I'm trained in continuous improvement. So it's our ability to see where there's roadblocks, map out processes, and understand what's in

our way so that we can solve the problem as we move forward. So I've taken, you know, from my mother's life lessons all the way through my career to be able to do that. But before I opened my consulting practice about nine years ago, I had the luxury of working for Lego. And, you know, everybody's familiar with the Lego brick. And I got trained on Lego series play where we play our way through solving problems using that methodology. So having all of these creative methods for unlocking the potential from within ourselves or processes or engaging teams in different ways has allowed me to bring this type of creativity into everything that I do. Yeah. Love it. Love it. Love it. Let's dive into some of the concepts in the book to, you know, obviously we don't have four and a half

hours to talk through every single step because we want people to buy the book and learn from it. But I really found something curious when I'm looking at the table of contents. You know, the first step of the process is finding yourself and the last step is the action plan. And that reminded me of the old saying, you know, ready, aim, fire. But in business and life, we tend to go just fire, fire, fire. You know, you just jump into stuff. You don't even aim at all. You don't even get ready and prepare.

But, you know, like sharpening the axe is the most important thing to cutting down the tree. I love that you start with the found. foundational center of finding yourself. Why is that so important to that process? Well, being, focusing on yourself is kind of the takeaway from this book, right? It's really about finding me incorporated and being the CEO of me. And they, if we don't know who we are, it's very hard to write a path forward. So this is somewhat of, you know, we hear that a lot, find your, you know, get yourself journey. This is really about understanding who we are, what our guiding principles are, what those

core values are that keep us to get us out of bed every day. And that center is me. And I have the power and the key to make those changes. And if I give it to someone else, I'm going to keep, you know, tumbling forward. So it's really important to focus on the center, which is me. and then move forward to now that I know who I am, where I've been, the decisions I've made to get me where I am now and where I want to go in the future, I now need a plan to help me move forward. And the fact that it's on sticky notes, it allows you to have that flexibility to have a defined plan. But, you know, life gets in the way.

And it's not about beating ourselves up that we didn't hit every goal. It's more so about taking the learning path around that and failing forward. Yeah, that's huge. I think that when I'm hearing that and then looking at some of these points about, you know, finding your guiding principles, things like that, it makes me think about, you know, sometimes you hear like life coaches that go, you know, well, determine your why and what do you want out of life? And I think that sometimes people would go, I just don't even know. So, you know, regarding finding or solidifying your guiding principles, if you were to. ask someone, what are your guiding principles? I think that they would give you a blank stare and say, I have no clue. What is part of your book helping someone to really articulate that and

dive in deep and find out? If you don't know your guiding principles, here's the process to start building them and figuring that out. Absolutely. That's exactly what one of the exercises does. It has you brainstorm again with the sticky notes, lay out all the things that you kind of stand for and then help you articulate that. And again, it's not in stone. You'll learn more about your guiding principles as you go through those exercises. So it's at least taking one step forward. And in life, you sometimes take one forward and two backwards. But this process allows for that. I love it. You know, also I think that there's an aspect of where are you now? Where do you want to be? and look at that gap and we got to close that gap and we got to figure out a way to close that gap

and some of those ways to close the gap are some of these steps in your process like well you got to figure out who some of your strategic alliances are or gathering your resources or you know figuring out how you can interpret what is actually happening your life so what do you do do when someone says here's where i am it's great here's where i want to be how do i get there What are some of those steps? Yeah. So if I was doing some coaching with an individual, those would be some of the things that we would investigate. If you're working on this your own, the journal that you can purchase to accompany the book asks you some of those questions for the daily exercises.

So what's my plan for the day? What are two or three things that I want to accomplish? and it start to be thoughtful around the system, and I don't mean a computer system per se, but the system that you want to operate your, you know, me incorporated on. So it is thinking that through and moving forward through small incremental steps.

I don't want anyone to leave this interview as they listen to it thinking they have to know what they want to be when they grow up. I mean, I'm an old. old soul here. And I don't know what I want to be when I grow up, but I do know that I wanted to publish a book at some point. And now I'm living that because I had that on my plan. And it's taken years to get here. Yeah. And I want to, you know, this is just like a free flowing conversation. And I think what you just said is powerful because it's not a matter of I now know what I want

to be when I grow up. And then maybe a step down the road or two steps down the road, you go, oh, maybe that's not exactly what I wanted to. Let me crumple that up and scrap it, start from scratch. No, it's mainly, what's that little slight pivot? And maybe you're learning things along the way, which gives you that springboard to realize the next step in your life might look a teeny bit different, but it's not like the past few steps were wasted. So does that play into some of your aligning of strengths and crafting that future to realize,

hey, here's what it is right now, but in a sense, it's a little bit fluid, not that you're going to revert it and do 180 degree change. Yeah, exactly. And I can tell you that, and sometimes you literally get hit by a truck, which is what happened to me. I had a professional career lined out for myself. And then I got in a car accident, had a traumatic brain injury and could no longer, I didn't feel I could look any longer operate at that corporate, you know, being. I have a board seat. So this is, you know, this is about readjusting to your exact, you know, point. But it isn't about crumpling up the sticky note.

It's about building off of so you now have a new pathway. But you don't want to forget that history. Yeah. And there would be certain life skills and strengths that you built in that past and then learn from that difficulty that now you're taking into that slight pivot. You know, it's not like one day you wanted to be a fireman. and then the next day you want to be a lawyer, you know, it's just like, oh, well, I learned these skills and that now opens the door for whatever. And here's something that I want to even pick your brain on, too.

You've got an exercise or a section of the process called aligning your strengths. Obviously, that means we have to identify our strengths, but we want to now align them to get to the next level. What do you feel about if there's a strength that's really not as developed as the others, or maybe here's a weakness? Do you focus really hard to bring a weakness up to a strength or a strength to a super strength or do you focus on where your true wheelhouse is and then build from there? Really great questions. We always, you know, it's part of focusing on how do we leverage those strengths to overcome what we see as weaknesses.

And sometimes, you know, I may consider this a strength, but how I'm delivering that strength might be uncomfortable for other folks. So it's getting on the same page because it can be a strength and a perceived weakness. So it's, you know, based on, you know, what we hear, right? And then we have to understand that if we consider this a strength, then it's okay to give ourselves permission to do that and to leverage that strength to come to, to build, you know, break down whatever walls are in the way. this is really a journey of awareness and you learn process and then, you know, one of the steps in the, you know, under each exercise is to bring your trusted advisors into the room. And you have to decide when that's the best time for you, you know, where, this is your process. No one's going to tell you that you're doing it wrong or you're doing it right.

you're going to take away from it what you put into it. But bringing those trusted advisors in, whoever they may be in your life, and take them through your journey, they are going to have some insights that you might be blind to. So inviting others in, and I say trusted advisors,

because it has to be people that you've built trust with, and you know they're going to be candid and honest with you. So that when you're mapping those strengths out and those weaknesses, you have that, you have that other voice that points out things you might not be aware of. 100%. I love that. Yeah. And there's a layer then of accountability. Maybe it's not a structured accountability, you know, per se, but maybe the fact that someone knows your, you know, goals and aspirations and the steps, maybe it's like that implied accountability to go, ooh, they're going to check it on me from time to time.

Yeah, and they can also help you on your journey. I mean, they may have contacts. They may have skill sets. They may have, you know, they may have just the right phrase to say to you during this process that unlock something that you didn't know is locked up. Mm-hmm. 100%. So here's a question in the step about crafting your future. You know, you know, what does it look like in your personal life, your business, you know, in all of these aspects.

do you ever find when you're working with someone that they craft their future and maybe you would read it and you're like, that's wonderful. But have you considered? And then, you know, they kind of crafted a future that is really good. But when you can open their eyes to what really could be, they can take it to the next level. Because I feel like we as humans are like, oh, it would be nice if, blah, blah, blah, and you're not really thinking big enough. Yeah, so I have them dream a little. Like if you're picturing yourself on December 31st or October 11th, 2034, 10 years from now, and you're looking back and you have a crystal ball, what does your life look like?

Right. So it's really about, I think, you know, one of the phrases that I use a lot is, you know, putting on an itchy sweater, right? Yeah. We're really uncomfortable. We're scratching away. And then, you know, then we tend to lean into it and say, you know, we'll change the sweater, whatever we have to do.

But we make some step forward. And I think the important, you know, the part of the book that I think and the learning and the research that I've done and worked with lots of people on this, it's that mapping process. It's that dreaming around what I want out of my life. life. And it's not that we have to be there tomorrow, but I know that, you know, as they go through that process and thinking about what they want, they have the ability to get there. Because now they've set those aspirations that they want. Does that help? Yeah, totally. And then you start working backwards. Okay, if this is your future, the step right

before that would be this and the step before that so that you now have an action plan. So I think it's like building those easy steps to, if you look at that big future for too long, you're like, oh, my word, I can't get there. But if you look at what you need to do this week, you're like, oh, I can do that. That's easy. But you've got to have that true north. So I think that is really, really powerful. Once you've got that action plan and you've got these steps, whether it's daily, weekly, monthly, however that that looks, it really is something that goes, this is the path forward. And I love your section called the unveiling celebrating success.

Now, probably, and here's a question for you, it's not just celebrating the success when you reach that future you've crafted. I would wonder, do you recommend people celebrating, oh, I did that step. I did that one piece. I did that metric, that thing, and keeping yourself motivated all the way through to draw you through. Exactly. And we do, you know, that's included in the book, is celebrating those small successes because those are the things that keep you motivated to moving forward. And I'm not saying you have to, you know, go out and get yourself a trip to Mexico or something and, you know, when you get those small milestones. But it might be, you know, you go treat yourself to, you know, a higher priced coffee, right?

Because not everybody has, you know, a huge budget to celebrate the, but it is around, you know, you have to celebrate those small successes in life. Because those are the things that keep you motivated and moving forward. And our brain, every 90 days, actually, and this is why we talk about the planning phase in 90 days, because after 90 days we get bored. And if our plan is out too long, if we're not setting those small incremental steps, we won't move forward. It's the same type of thing with when you set those, you know, New Year's resolutions. The gyms are packed in January. Yep. By March 1.

March, you know, the ones that exercise all the time actually have space. You know, and that's why this action plan is set in 90 days increments. I love it. I love it. Begin with the end in mind. Create that future. Create your action steps. Get your resources.

Have your sticky notes with all the little steps. Celebrate all along the way. And the result is something far greater than what you probably could have imagined before going through the process. Exactly. That is my hope. Yeah, I love it. I love it. So this is spectacular.

I'm looking forward to reading the book. And how would you say that a listener could learn more about the book, what you do and pick up a copy for themselves? So when it's released, which is coming, the book's being released on right now, October 17th. But you can come to Leadingtoenlock.com and learn more about what I do and how this book, can help you become the CEO of you. I love it. Well, Gail, thank you so much for coming on. It's been a real pleasure talking with you.

Thank you, Mike. I appreciate your time and for you doing this for me. You've been listening to Influential Entrepreneurs with Mike Saunders. To learn more about the resources mentioned on today's show or listen to past episodes, visit www.