Laura Beers

Honestly, I get down in the dumps sometimes, and I will say my husband has been a large inspiration in that. Even this week, I have ups and downs all the time, and like, good things happen and bad things happen, and I had like a really negative early on this week, and he was able to pull me out of it and be like, look, like, just move on. Like, it's just one help, and so I really, really treasure that relationship that I have with him, because he's able to help in that regard.

I think younger women entering any type of field, they want to see examples that success doesn't necessarily fit a traditional mold. You can lead through relationship building. Communication is huge - if I'm talking to you, I gotta tell you, like, hey, like, I'm not gonna have this to you in time, but I'm gonna have it to you by this time, or look, this just isn't working, like, let's go a different direction. Emotional intelligence is important - you need to recognize your audience, you need to recognize what the goal is here. While the emotion can be into it, you also need to think strategically. The best advice I can give to anybody in any career is I don't claim to know everything, but I'll find it out for you.

I think challenges - there were definitely moments where I had to prove myself more quickly, especially early on. Because like I said, I didn't know anything going in, and I don't claim to know everything, but I always say, like, I will find out for you. Those sometimes negative experiences that I felt early on definitely sharpened my communication skills. It was like a confidence thing I had to get over, a nice little hump there to just be like, okay, if they don't like me, they don't like me, but I'm the professional here, and I need to move forward and be confident in what I do now. And finally, basically just like my ability to create value to you, to make you want to do business with me and trust what I do have to say.

I guess like morals, and this goes in both personal and my career. The work I do ultimately impacts families - you're handling people's money. The families, and the business continuity, like I'm helping businesses do different agreements if one of them were to get very ill, or one of them would unfortunately pass away. Financial security is like the utmost importance. So it's something that I take very seriously. I'm not going to recommend something that I think is going to fail, I'm not going to recommend something that I don't think that the client can handle. And I also go back to that in my personal life as well. Like, I can be hard on people, but I'm hard because I love them, and I want you to succeed. But I'm not going to tell you to do something that's going to ruin a situation or ruin a relationship with a family or a friend, anything like that. I definitely take my conversations seriously and think before I speak.