Your Business Is a Hot Mess and Laura Lorenz Knows Why

Plates are wobbling everywhere because most of you are running your companies like caffeinated squirrels on a sugar high.

I know this because I literally spent 8 years doing the same thing. Chasing AI. Chasing trends. Chasing that one LinkedIn guru who promised me his "7-figure framework" would change everything (it didn't).

Then I sat down with Laura Lorenz—this absolute legend who's been counseling entrepreneurs for 35 YEARS—and she called out every single one of my bad habits in the first ten minutes.

The Part Where She Roasted All of Us

"The first thing entrepreneurs need to know," Laura said, completely deadpan, "is that you need help."

Mic drop.

She wasn't being mean. She was being real. Because here's the truth bomb she dropped: doing it all yourself as chief-cook-and-bottle-washer is how you end up with a burnt-out team, a bloated product roadmap, and a Slack channel full of people who have no idea what the company actually does anymore.

Sound familiar? Yeah, I thought so.

The Three-Thing Framework That'll Save Your Sanity

Here's where it gets good (and where I started taking notes like my life depended on it).

Laura works with her clients on quarterly roadmaps—not yearly, because let's be honest, your 2024 strategic plan was outdated by March. She has them pick ONE THING that'll actually move the needle. Usually revenue, because money good, no money bad.

Then—and this is the part that made me want to cry—she makes them pick THREE TASKS A DAY that drive toward that one thing.

That's it. Three things. Not the 47-item to-do list you've been carrying around like a badge of honor while secretly drowning.

One of her clients, a graphic designer, did exactly this. First year working together? Doubled his income.

Not by working harder. By working on the right things.

Why Your Company Culture Is Probably Broken (Sorry)

We got into hiring, and Laura dropped another truth bomb that every scaling company needs tattooed on their forehead:

"Hire for cultural fit, not just skills. Skills can be taught. Cultural fit can't."

She and her partner had their vision and core values on BIG POSTERS in the office. Every day. In everyone's face. Because when you hire a rockstar developer who's also a toxic narcissist, guess what? They don't care about your fancy tech stack. They're going to disrupt the team and ruin the human connection that makes your company actually work.

And in health tech and medtech—where stakeholder engagement and trusted advisor relationships are literally your competitive advantage—you can't afford to have people who don't get it.

The Accountability Partner Trap

Here's something Laura said that hit different: free accountability partners sound great until you're both freaking out at the same time and the calls just... stop.

Been there. Have the therapy bills to prove it.

Her advice? If you're serious about building unshakeable business relationships (with clients AND yourself), hire someone who's actually paid to keep you on track. Because when things get hard—and they WILL get hard—you need someone whose job it is to show up.

What This Actually Means for You

If you're scaling a health tech or medtech company right now, you're dealing with:

• Reducing client churn while trying to grow

• Building high-retention client relationships in competitive markets

• Transforming company culture without losing what made you special in the first place

• Trying to figure out which AI tool to invest in (spoiler: probably none of them right now)

Laura's approach isn't about growth hacking or 10x-ing your metrics. It's about proactive relationship management—with your team, your clients, and yourself.

It's about remembering that even in B2B health tech, we're really doing H2H. Human to human.

Why You Should Actually Listen to This Episode

Because Laura has been doing this for 35 years and has seen every mistake you're about to make. Twice.

Because she'll tell you the truth about building business relationships in the digital age without trying to sell you a course.

And because sometimes the most revolutionary thing you can do for your scaling company is just... focus.

Three things a day. One goal per quarter. Vision and values that everyone actually knows.

Revolutionary? No.
Rare? Absolutely.

Watch the full episode here to hear Laura break down exactly how to stop chasing squirrels and start building the sustainable business expansion you actually want.

P.S. If you're reading this while simultaneously checking Slack, answering emails, and "just quickly" reviewing that deck for tomorrow's meeting... Laura's talking to you. Stop it. Pick three things. Do those. The rest can wait. Trust me, I'm writing this from experience—specifically, the experience of learning this lesson the hard way approximately 10,000 times.

Karl Pontau hosts The Human Connection Podcast, where we talk about the stuff that actually matters in business: the humans running it. Because whether you're B2B or B2C, it's really H2H—human to human. Subscribe so you don't miss the next episode where we probably say something that'll make your HR department uncomfortable.