Welcome to the Make Work Work Better Podcast, where we delve into the minds and experiences of some of the most inspiring leaders in business today. I'm your host, doctor Marc Reynolds, and I'm thrilled to introduce to you our special guest today, Lauren Crampsie. Lauren, thank you for joining us today. You're quite welcome, Marc. Happy to be here. Can you tell us a little bit about your career journey?
The first third of it was fairly traditional, in terms of I worked, a, famous storied, ad agency called Ogalvy and Mather, for almost 20 years, actually. So I had a slight, stint, in television before then because I wanted to be on, on TV, as most, drama students, do, those of us that can play sports, improvise in drama and take acting lessons. but after that, I went to, to tell stories. And, that's really, why I stayed at Ogilvy as long as I did.
And my my rise there was very, looking back, I think too quick, but it was very quick. I was very lucky. I got promoted very quickly. I was the first female everything. So just for your audience, let's not even go there because, anything you can imagine, like using the bathroom, to, being, a CMO. I was the first female, but I was the youngest. partner. Youngest senior partner, youngest director of business development, youngest CMO, first CMO of North America.
first female president of New York, which was our flagship office. I was very lucky. And, I stayed there not only because, they allowed me the gift of being able to raise a family while doing so. I had two babies while I was, I was at Ogilvy, I think for me, I love the idea of storytelling and I love the idea of, being able to tell stories that move people and impact people, but also, provide people with an end product, that they need. And that's what advertising is. That's what marketing is.
While my career, has now pivoted a bit, that's still the sort of core and crux of of what I believe in. and, since Ogilvy, I have been, a CMO. I've been a CMO of a sports team. For those of you who like European football or soccer, as we call it in the United States, I was the CMO of Chelsea, Football Club under new ownership. So I did that for, about 18 months. That's that was my most recent gig. Before that, I was running an influencer marketing agency.
So working with, a lot of creators like Marc, and podcasters like Marc. And, Mark ticks a lot of boxes, in terms of the Renaissance man, that that he is. So, that was fun because it was a very niche side of storytelling. It sort of democratized media in that, an individual, a creator could be the product and the message and the distribution.
and that was a really interesting place for me to be, because that was the first time that I really got to operate with, a distribution and a message and a product, kind of all, together collapsing the funnel. For those of you that know, marketing, jargon, that's what I used to call it, how, creators and influencers were the only, entity, in marketing and advertising since the dawn of time that could truly collapse the funnel.
and now I'm, transitioning, to more of a risk portfolio side of my career. So whereas most of my career has been fairly conservative in terms of, the paycheck, I can expect, the promotions, I can expect the stock, I can expect the, the day to day I can expect, I'm now starting to toy with a bit more of the unexpected.
And that includes everything from pitching investors on raising capital to go out and buy, entertainment, media and sports assets to, consulting, with companies like Formula One on, what their global strategy, IP strategy should look like to, talking to to people that are behind at the World Cup in 2026 and how I can help there.
It's a bit more of a roller coaster, this, chapter of my career because, although I have more control of my schedule, it is a bit more unpredictable, in terms of what I can expect from, from day to day. I think that sets itself up perfectly. For what I was wanting to talk about next, and that is going from the stable environment to one that's less stable. And you're in control of more. It's not like a prescribed do this, this, this and this. It's a challenge in its own.
What are some of the lessons that you've learned about how to make work work better for yourself. What has got you to a point where you feel like this is even a choice to make? Well, in all fairness, I'm not sure I'm at that point yet. Talk to me again when I do the next podcast. Or of course, of course, of. Course, in in a in a couple of months. Experience and wisdom. And unfortunately for those of us that want to stay young forever, it comes with age, right?
The more you grow as a person and the more you diversify what you mean to someone or something, whether it's a friend, a mom, a wife, a partner, a father, an aunt and uncle, any of it, you start to realize that you never will have all the answers and the same questions that you asked yourself, maybe when you were 18, 19, 20, 21 are still the same questions you're asking yourself now.
“Who am I?” “What am I supposed to be doing on this planet?” Why do these things that I know about myself to be, flaws still there? Do I really matter? Those are still questions I ask myself today. I think the difference is I have the experience of living, and the wisdom of, for the most part, everything will be okay to not dwell on on those moments and dwell on those questions. In a pithy way, I would say, how do I make work work for me now is I just know better.
I know better than to let The naysayers in my brain control my brain. I know better than to let the small stuff, eat away at me. And I know better than to believe myself to be anything less than, unique and valuable to the world. I know you talk a lot about this, Marc.
You have to wake up every morning and know that, even if you do nothing that day, but literally wake up, you're valuable and I think that's very hard to think and believe, when you're younger and it gets easier to do that as you age. And I think that's when it gets easier to take risks. I mean, I'm a mom of two, about to be in my mid 40s. people would argue this isn't exactly the right time in my life to be taking risks.
but I don't think I would have been emotionally to your question earlier, Marc, about the inner strength. I don't think I would have been emotionally prepared, to take any type of risk. Any type of risk, any earlier. Yeah. I've been able to watch your process and, and as you're going through and for those of you that are listening to some of what she's saying like, oh, well, really, just everyone's valuable. That's nice.
I think it's actually really crucial when we're talking especially about executives giving yourself that kind of value and permission, not trying to base it on revenue I'm bringing in, though. Yes. That's important to tell your board. Your board is going to need to know that they're going to care about that. But there's a different level underneath that can often be neglected when everything else is there.
I want to highlight that is something that is easy to dismiss as just sounding simple and trite, but it's really pretty huge. 100% because here's the reality. Life happens to everyone. No one is without trauma. Yeah. if you're someone that that is sitting on the other end of this, if you're one of the million subscribers to Mark's Channel and one of the 2 million people watching this right now, and if you think that this is all trite and this is all easy to say and.
When life happens to you, it doesn't become trite anymore. In fact, if you don't practice understanding and knowing that it isn't trite, it can really eff you up when life happens, because it's often in the moments of silence when we understand the most and we question the most and we fear the most. That's why people go to bed with their televisions on. Right. Right. and I think that, for me, and Mark knows this, I have a letter that I wrote myself next to my bed, framed that I wrote myself.
Dear Lauren love, Lauren. It's a two page letter and every time I feel lost in myself, I read it. And if it makes me feel uncomfortable when I'm reading it, I read it again and I read it again, and I read it again until I can read it and it feels normal and comfortable because it's not easy to tell yourself that you're the gift. Your breath is the gift. Your being is the gift. Your presence. And being able to stay present is the gift.
That's weird stuff, just to say out loud and to feel, but it's necessary when you are faced with life and life's trauma and the not so nice part of life. Yeah. I mean, I like to make it concrete. If you are an executive. Right? And things are going great, you're rising up, you're bringing in lots of money. You're you're making some really positive changes that can feel really good. And it can be like, oh, that's why I'm valuable. That's why people need me.
But then the problem is what happens when the economy goes south and don't donations or whatever drops off the face the map. Or investors decide to go somewhere else or you have a turn and health, well, I'm not valuable anymore. I'm not doing those things that made me important. Or when you don't get that promotion. That really then can throw you into a really difficult loop where if you've preempted that, you've really done this work ahead of time.
Those just become little road bumps that you move through and move past. And I think when we look at the people that a lot of people would probably classify as successful human beings, they would probably say that it's because they didn't let the roadblock stop them. It's because they they felt they knew something deeper that kept pushing them. If you were to tell someone else, okay, I'm sitting here and I'm hearing this and I can open my mind and say, I can see how this is valuable.
What are some things you actually do? And you already shared one of the letter. Anything else that came to your mind of how you arrived at this place, or how you got yourself to this more grounded sense of self? Yeah. I mean, again, it's not sexy and especially in today's, day and age. First it's understanding your inner child. And what I mean by that is understanding that, you are the way you are because of things that happened to you. Yeah. Not everyone can afford therapy.
Right. so, read a book on it. There's a million different books. Oprah, has sanctioned a bunch of them. The practice. isn't that complicated. Something happened to all of us when we were a child. Right. So understanding what happened to you and, how you can process that and how that has made you who you are. And by the way, when I say that, I don't mean it has to be dark. I don't mean it has to be, detrimental to your mental health.
It can be as simple as I lost my mom in a grocery store once, and I couldn't find her for 10s 15 seconds. Two seconds. but these books give you practical applications to help you figure out what that is. And then once you understand that, it allows you to do what is necessary on, any journey to understanding, your value and that's understanding your ego and the, peaks and valleys of your ego and the pushes and pulls. What are your triggers? What's going to push your ego into overdrive?
What's going to pull your ego back? We all have an ego. I often say to people, and to my husband especially your ego is not your amigo. So many words get thrown around these days, and especially in social media. And as we continue as a society to embrace mental wellness, whether we're embracing it correctly or not. Not for me to decide.
We put ego on this pedestal, in executive, life where, we're taught that, you need to have an ego and you need to, be prideful and you need to have this, almost unsustainable level of confidence in order to achieve what you want to achieve and in order to do this, hard job that we call CEO or CMO or CFO or whatever the case may be. And the reality is, it's the opposite of that. You need to not have an ego. You need to not, have, pride.
But the only way to do that is to understand what it is to you. And once you understand what it is to you, how to keep it in check. Like for me. My ego was rooted in anger and entitlement. That's at a high level. Unique to me, it's that I was an only child and I had an alcoholic father. So I believe that I was owed something. The world owed me something. and that's how I lived. I would say, up to and through the pandemic, it peaked at the pandemic, the anger and the entitlement.
and then, that's when I really started doing the work. And what drives your ego is different for everyone. but, for me, it was that it was I was entitled and I was angry. I can come up with so many anecdotes throughout my career where that played out. I said, I just said promotions. I didn't get people that were brought in to be my new boss. Why them and not me? as opposed to the they're here to make me the why, right? They're here to make me better.
I was having this conversation with my son last night. Actually, my son's only, he's almost 12, but he's a very old soul, and he's sort of spiritually mature, and he doesn't like one of his teachers. and I was saying to him, Drake, what? You're looking at this all wrong. You need to use her to make yourself better. If she thinks you distract, the people around you too much, And you think you're just engaging in a conversation, they already started.
Then just stop engaging in the conversation that they already started. See if she treats you differently. Learn about yourself through the pain of not feeling like this teacher, likes you or that you like this teacher. I don't like words like executive. I have a very mmm reaction to it. I don't like it, because at the end of the day, it's a label that we put on a tranche of people that may or may not understand the enormous responsibility they have.
I am a big believer in accountability, and I'm also a big believer in when you're responsible for creating and curating an atmosphere and environment, anything that happens in that atmosphere and environment that is subject to scrutiny is on you. And I just don't think executives are held accountable and are held to that standard. And I think it's it's a big reason why I don't like the word. I think I would like the word if I felt like It was a sort of state of professional being.
My dad taught me very early on treat everyone like they're the CEO. And that's what I did. throughout my entire career, everyone from the security guard, at check in, to the cleaning professionals at night when I was working late. Everyone was a CEO. That's a bit of the sort of anarchist side of me, the non-conforming side of me, that has never really responded well to that word. That's a really helpful paradigm and mind shift to make.
What would you say are some of the top tools that helped you adjust your mindset? We made this switched from version A of self to version 2.0. What are some of the practical tools you mentioned? Journaling, as a potential one, which has a lot of data behind why that successful and an important practice. And it is it is. Yeah. Is there anything else that stands out to you as things that really were valuable to you and making that switch? Silence. And I don't mean meditation.
Look, meditation works for a lot of people. I do think it's it's especially good for recovering addicts, and or alcoholics, because it, it provides a healthier addiction. but it's not for everyone. And I understand that. And I understand people that have an adverse reaction to meditation. And that's why I say silence. Ultimately it's about sitting with yourself in a way that forces your mind to get what it needs to get and then relax.
I used to be one of those people that fell asleep with the TV on. Yeah. And I didn't even realize why. As I said earlier, I'm an only child. My father passed away, almost six years ago now, for the first year after he passed, I would only watch TV on my laptop. It didn't even occur to me that I was doing it. It wasn't until I understood silence, that I realized how insane the circle of life is in that when we're being developed and formed as humans, we do that in this very, safe, secure cocoon.
And when we feel our most underdeveloped, undeveloped, lost, etc., It is Subconscious human nature to seek that out again. And that's what I was doing after my dad died. Ultimately, what silence does is it allows you to see and feel the extraordinary bigness of the universe. I can't describe definitively why that had the impact it had on me, to be honest, Marc. But I can say that, I now seek silence out in different ways. And I've also never felt truly lonely, since I started doing, the work.
I agree with you. I think taking time just to let things be silent, even though it can be so excruciating I’m in New York City, by the way. It can be so hard to just let yourself sit there in silence and not pick up your phone and just to stop. Right. On the flip side, just because I have insider information, I also know that in balancing that you have. Really been deliberate in finding other people to have to discover the human sides of you, to develop those, to work on those.
You've not only isolated. Right. Though that's a huge step. But there's the next step after that of coming out and choosing to interact with people in meaningful ways and reaching for help, or reaching for people who can act as good mirrors to help us see, who we are. And not just interacting in business, business, business, business or here's my duty, here's my role, but let's have a real human conversation, it seems. to have been an important part of the journey too.
I agree with you, and you've been instrumental in helping me ascertain who should be in that network and who's okay to to be a little bit more, siloed. but, I would say that balance has been by far the hardest part of this journey, because I was a very, very, very, very social person. Now I realize I was I'm really an introvert.
and that's part of the reason why I burnt out when I did, because I was overfilling my cup and overfilling my cup and overfilling my cup and I, never really understood that I was that I'm actually a extroverted introvert. Now, at the same time. and hopefully this won't come back to haunt me later in life. But I used to hate being at home. I used to have anxiety being in my living room. I would hide in my bedroom and I had two kids and one of them is, ASD autism spectrum.
So, the bedroom was not the place for me to be. And now, my home is the only place I want to be, and my living room is the only place I want to be. With my family is the only place I want to be. And again, this is why understanding your ego is so critical. You have to look at everything through the lens of, well, yeah, that might have happened or yeah, I might be a little less social now, but. Who am I spending all my time with my family? Is I really so bad, Right.
When you meet someone that is truly powerful, like, if I'm looking at, Lauren. So she brought me out to work with this influencer agency, and some of their team. So we do this workshop, and then I go out to to dinner with a few of of the leaders that night, and without any prompting, they just start talking about how much she's changed their life as human beings. Because she would listen to them. She would value them as a human. She was trying to mentor them and help them reach their goals.
I don't even think Lauren realizes half the time what she's doing with these people, because it's just who she is. It's just that's that's who she's chosen to become. And so again, I would challenge those that initially hear some of these things and think, oh, this feels like soft goods. How do I measure this?
there are ways we can measure it, but really spending time in silence, like you're saying, finding other people that are really going to help you to come to your own conclusions and decisions and guide you through some of that, and then really choosing who do you want to become as a human, not just as a business leader? It's like what you're saying, really, everything we're should do is so that we can be engaged and happy with who we are in our living room, with our family.
Just on journaling for one thing. One second Marc. Yeah, I wouldn't even call it journaling in the traditional way that we think about journaling. It's more stream of consciousness, It's almost like annotating your brain because I think the word journaling can get very intimidating to people. I mean, I know it was for me, and they feel like they have to follow a certain format or it means waking up in the morning. I'm grateful for the food in my fridge. And, the sun is shining.
People that are stressed out, run or sprint or do hit workouts or whatever and sweat or whatever, like it's mental sweat, it's getting out the mental sweat. That's really what it is. Sorry, I love it. No, I think that's a great way of looking at it. And you're right, people get really intimidated by that. But it's a great way to detox your brain and clarify your thoughts. and to externalize what's going on inside so that you can get that brain to slow down and focus on what matters.
Right. Exactly. When you've worked with teams of people. Yes, groups of people, or you've seen other teams of people. Where do you see the common pitfalls being and what are some things that you've seen that have remedied that, that have changed the dynamic, have helped these groups go from dysfunctional to efficient groups of people that are able to work and collaborate together. The biggest pitfall I find is that there's always the rotten fruit in the fruit basket.
Always. And it's usually not their fault. and if it is, you got to do something about it, and that's more about taking, disciplinary action. But nine times out of ten, it's not their fault. And you are better served... any manager, any line manager, all the way up to to CEO, you are better served spending 90% with that, rotten apple and 10% with the oranges and the grapes and the bananas. Then you are saying, what, that apples rotten. I don't want to look at it. I don't want to touch it.
I don't I'm just going to make all this fruit shine brighter in the hopes that no one will notice. And that is the biggest, biggest, biggest, biggest, biggest, flaw I see in management and managers, they don't deal with the rotten fruit. I'm a believer in accountability. Guess what can take down an entire organization. That's right. One employee.
You're ignoring the bottom 20% because you are going to riff them in the fourth quarter anyway, because you have some rolling corporate strategy where every September, as you start to plan out the following year or every July or whatever fiscal calendar you're on, you rotate out the bottom 20% bull crap. Nobody does it for real. Everyone talks about doing it. Nobody actually gets rid of their bottom. Nobody actually remixes talent. Nobody actually does that. Right.
And it's because it's really hard. Yeah. and expensive. They are more influenced by that extra 80% than they are by the people that show up once a year in some keynote with some fancy slides, with animations to tell them that they're great. Unless that person is next to them in the quesadilla line, in the cafeteria every day. They're not going to be influenced by them. They're going to be influenced by the other 80% that they have to work with.
I'm such a big believer in this because there's only one thing that any top 20% performer cares about. I'm sorry, I hate to be the bearer of bad news on this, There's only one thing they care about, and it's green and it's cold, and it's hard okay. So take that pot of money that you had put aside for the great senior leadership retreat in wherever and split it up between the 250 people. It's always 250 people, by the way.
They get invited, split it up to the 250 people and give it to them in their pockets, and then teach them how to invest it properly and teach them how to build generational wealth. And don't talk to them at all about, the company that they work for. And then get the bottom 20% or the other 80% or the other 50% together and spend the retreat money on them.
And take them through exercises that help them understand that it's okay to not be okay, and it's okay to be confused, and it's okay to feel like, you have to be the smartest, the prettiest, the funniest, whatever. Yeah, because the change happens bottom up. It always happens from the bottom up, not from the top down. A practical way to deal with the rotten fruit, Okay. Let's say you oversee a group In 10 people I would say you probably have one. And that's probably it.
in most cases start having one on ones with that person once a week. Okay. Have one on ones with everyone else once every other week. it's going to happen. The person that you're having the one on one with once a week. The bad apple okay. They feel seen and heard. And guess what? That's not going to do. That's not going to play out as ego. And bragger behavior in the team meetings that you're not in because you're going to be working with that person and you're going to be helping them.
they're going to get better in those team meetings, right? Yeah. Now someone may say, well, yeah. But then if you're nine people that, deserve that one on one with you. And they're the people that are doing a great job and they don't have the bad attitude and they don't have the how are they going to feel? They're going to feel like you are the smartest boss they have ever had, because you found the bad apple, and you're working with it once a week to make it better,
and you think they want to be with you once a week? Probably not. They got enough to do because they're good performers. So that's just like a practical example. And just to take it one step further, I have two quick anecdotes, Marc, if that’s okay? I once had someone ask me, how do you identify, like who's bringing the team down or, how do you identify that the naysayer in the team or the nonbeliever? I think it was nonbeliever in the team. And what did I say? Sit in silence.
That's it. That's it. Just watch and listen and you'll know in an hour, if not less. Know that's anecdote number one. Anecdote number two is a bit off topic, but there's a rampant, idea in corporate America right now around, offending people. Right. Frankly, it's always been there. But I think it's even worse now because the good news is there's more accountability and there's more consequence of offending an individual or a group of individuals. Right?
But as a leader, never, ever, ever, ever be afraid to offend someone, ever. Because you'll know when you did and you'll never do it again. Because here's what happens people are afraid of offending people and they're nice and they hide under their desks and they don't speak up too much. And those tend to be the people that end up getting promoted, in some cases, end up running companies.
And then you want to know when they offend people, when it's too late, and you want to know why they offend people because they now feel like, oh, well, that's like, they have so much power. They're in charge. They can say whatever they want, right? Because everyone's telling them what they want to hear. But at that point, the sooner you offend someone, the sooner you learn.
The sooner you learn how to be inclusive, the sooner you learn how to be a servant, which is what every leader needs to be a servant. In my opinion, it's a zero sum game.
If you hit it early enough in your career and, and the reason why I'm reading this now is because I had I have someone that that it is a is it my, my partner in in business, now, who I worked with for a very long time, we were in a in a group chat with someone yesterday, and he said he texted me because this is the other thing, we can do a separate podcast on just like, texting etiquette and and professional environments. But he saw I texted me. Oh, I wouldn't say that if I were you.
what you said, like, I, I don't want to offend him and something like that. And I wrote back and I said, I do. I said, because there's only one person right now in this professional environment that I'm afraid of offending, and that's you as my trusted business partner. and by the way, you just offended me by texting that Right. I'm giving your your listeners permission to offend. so that they learn.
Yeah. It's not like you're purposely trying to offend people, but we have to learn how to speak with our own authentic voice, and be who we are. Because if we don't, we never will until it's too late. And then all of a sudden, it doesn't work. It comes out in a way that we don't intend, and we have to make space for other people to be able to do the same. And look a lot of people say, follow your gut.
My advice in that regard would be if you feel like it's going to be offensive, turn it into a question. And then ask it as a question. That's the best way of getting around, listening to your gut, but also getting to an answer. And I think that also goes back to your thing of ego. Yeah. The priority really comes back to I want to know the truth. I want to know what you really think and feel. I want to know the real situation. I want to know the real facts.
Then that that is really the priority that comes down and takes away ego, takes away the things, gets us to actually sit and listen in silence like you're talking about. And and that's one of the things that, as we work together that I've really appreciated is that when it comes down to it, Lauren will fight me tooth and nail if she doesn't feel like it's true to her experience. Right?
But as soon as we come to something, even if it's hard or it feels like it's like, hard self truth to realize, she'll immediately snap it up as long as it feels true and genuine. And I think that's the sign of a really strong leadership. Lauren, thank you so much for coming on and sharing these ideas and thoughts, for being so candid and vulnerable and willing to just share these thoughts and these lessons learned over a career. Right?
Some of the really hard lessons to learn that took a lot of work and effort. So thank you. Thanks for joining us today. Thank you, Marc, for having me. And thank you to everyone for listening If anyone wants to ask me any more questions or get in touch with me, my, Instagram is @byLaurenCrampsie. and, yeah, you can DM me on Instagram. Thank you. And thank you, Mark. You've been a great coach. and partner, to me on on my own career journey. And like and subscribe.
And like and like and subscribe. All right. We'll see you next time. Thank you everybody.