The problem with high-performance coaching for high-achieving women? They're already high performers. That's exactly the problem.

This episode kicks off something new: a multi-week series Laurie's calling Back to School (of Midlife) — not the pencils-and-Trapper-Keeper kind of back to school, the adult kind. Every week for the next several weeks, she's walking through the frameworks she's built over the years, where they came from, and how she actually uses them with clients.

Today's episode is the origin story. Before there was a BEST LIFE™ framework, before Learn/Earn/Yearn, before Curiosity → Clarity → Courage → Confidence, there was a certification — an elite one, one of only 1,100 in the world — and a realization that cracked everything else open.

Laurie walks through exactly what that certification taught her (and still uses in every session), and exactly how "she's already a high performer" turns out to be the whole problem, not a strength to lean on harder. She also gets into two decades of living this pattern herself — first in law, then in commercial real estate — before she ever became a coach.

What we cover:

• Why Laurie is kicking off a new podcast series, and why she's leaning all the way into the back-to-school metaphor
• The "adulting playbook" — school, job, marriage, kids, promotion, retirement — and the homework she gives you about it
• Why she chose Certified High Performance Coaching, and the Brendon Burchard connection that led her there
• What the CHPC curriculum actually taught her — and why she still uses those skills in every session today
• Why "busyness" is often an avoidance technique, including her own real example of over-boarding on volunteer work and marathon training to avoid being home
• The most important piece her clients kept missing: checking in with themselves
• Why it wasn't a gap in the curriculum — it was just more of the same
• The two decades she spent living this exact pattern herself, in law and then commercial real estate
• What Personal Leadership Development actually means, and why it's not life coaching or executive coaching — it's the umbrella above both
• A preview of the entire Back to School series: BEST LIFE™, Learn/Earn/Yearn, Curiosity/Clarity/Courage/Confidence, and an honest look at what's happening with the Mastermind
• The adult "back to school supply list" — a new notebook, a hall pass, an elective, and office hours
• Why "I just need to work harder" is almost never actually about working harder

Quotable moments

• "You have one life. You need to bring all of those pieces of your life instead of compartmentalizing them."
• "That feeling of having to become someone different depending on which room you walked into — that's not just a career problem. That's the whole thing I coach on now."
• "The problem with high performance coaching for high-achieving women is they're already high performers... they're missing the most important piece, which is checking in with themselves."
• "It wasn't so much a gap in the coaching curriculum. It was just more of the same."
• "Probably 95% of the time, the statement 'I just need to work harder' usually means I haven't asked myself what I actually want."
• "We use a busy schedule as an avoidance technique."
• "It's not the work that's leaving you burned out. It's the requirement to show up as a different person in every different role you're asked to fill."

Resources + links mentioned

• Episode 183 — "Did You Actually Choose This Life? Or Did You Just Do What Was Expected?"
• Best Life Planner
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