Edify

I am the owner of a high-end steakhouse. Laurie was sent to me by a friend, and honestly, I resisted it a bit — I thought I already knew everything there was to know about my own business.

I was shocked at the things she pointed out. She has this way of seeing things through the eyes of other people. For example, she was able to tell me that my business slowed down, on paper, at very particular times. It turned out to be directly tied to which staff were working during those hours. I hadn’t even realized our numbers were so much lower on certain days.

Once she showed me, it was impossible to unsee. I adjusted who I had on the floor and when, gave a little extra training where it was needed, and the difference showed up almost immediately. Laurie saw in a single sitting what I had been missing for years.

I am a physician, part of a large practice that I helped build from the ground up. When Laurie told me there was money that was meant to come to me, I almost refused to listen — I trust my partners completely.

But she did not stop there. She described exactly who I needed to speak with, and even described his office down to the type of plants he keeps in it. It was uncanny. It turned out she was right: there had been a mistake in the last quarter, and I was owed far more than I had received.

Now I know to listen with an open mind. Laurie visits quarterly — and I would not run things any other way.

I am an entrepreneur, and I was going through a period of high stress and low productivity. A friend told me to go see Laurie. All he said was, “She can help you.” I didn’t have a clue what to expect.

I just started talking, and she began asking questions. I could tell she was really connecting to me and to the way I process things. She pointed out things that no doctor has ever been able to explain to me. I consider myself very intelligent, but there are certain things I struggle with — focus is one of them. She literally described what it was like to be inside my head, better than I ever could have put into words.

Once she did that, she gave me suggestions I could actually use. She told me to try listening to a certain kind of music through earbuds while I worked on specific tasks. I didn’t even want to try it — it sounded counterproductive — but it really worked. Something so simple made such a difference.

The biggest difference between seeing Laurie and everyone else who has tried to help me is that she actually felt what it was like to be me, and built her suggestions around that. There was no cookie-cutter script. Nothing generic. Just me.