Laura Berman Fortgang

How to Dolly-size Your Life

By Laura Berman Fortgang on September 6, 2026

I’ve got Dolly on the brain this week – wondering if you do too.

By now you’ve heard we lost Dolly Parton last week. She was 80 years old, and she’d kept her illness largely private — moving through the world, right up until the end, like a masterclass in how to live.

I never met her. I wasn’t even a diehard fan in the traditional sense. But Dolly and I go back further than you might think! Several years ago, I created a character called Life Coach Lurlene, modeled loosely on Dolly herself: same rhinestone energy and big personality, just with a darker wig and a little Tony Robbins mixed in. She’s been part of my world for years. So when I sat down for this week’s newsletter, it wasn’t really a stretch; it was personal.

There are so many lessons to extract from her fine example of being a good human.

Give Without Needing Credit

The first thing that comes to mind with Dolly is her Imagination Library — decades of free books mailed to children everywhere, every single month. No press conference each time. No campaign to make sure everyone knew. It was never about her; it was about the service. The same goes for the quieter stories coming out now, about families she helped after natural disasters and hard times, always without looking for the spotlight.

The question worth sitting with: How could you give a little more this week without looking for the credit?

Be Who You Are, On Purpose

Dolly kept the rhinestones, the wigs, and the whole bit, but she never lost track of where she came from or who she actually was. She wasn’t toning herself down to fit into Nashville, or Hollywood, or anyone’s idea of respectable. She said it best herself: “Find out who you are, and do it on purpose.”

Not “Figure out who you are and apologize for it.”
Not “Tone it down until it’s convenient.”
On purpose.
That’s the whole lesson in one line.

Practice Kindness Like a Discipline, Not a Mood

This is the one I keep coming back to. Watching the tributes roll in last week, almost nobody is talking about a favorite song first. They’re talking about how she treated the people in the room with her. Every account says the same thing: warm on the good days, warm on the bad ones too.

That’s not a personality trait; that’s a discipline. I’ll be honest — I aspire to it, and I don’t fully know how to get there yet. My guess is it starts with being kinder to yourself first, and it ripples out from there. But Dolly chose it, consistently, for decades. That’s the part worth borrowing.

Humor and Grace Under Scrutiny

She beat everyone to the punchline. “It’s very expensive to look this cheap,” she used to say — getting ahead of the joke before anyone else could make it at her expense. She knew exactly what people said about her, and she had the grace to laugh first.

Underneath the humor was a serious operator. Nobody builds a $450 million fortune without being a genuinely sharp businessperson. But she never let the seriousness crowd out the joy. Her own words on that: “Never get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.”

Sit with that one for a minute. I did.

The Challenge This Week

I always like to leave you with a challenge, just borrowed a little more directly this time:
Dolly-size your life.

Give without needing credit.
Be who you are, on purpose.
Practice kindness like a discipline.
Don’t get so busy building everything around you that you forget to build a life.

Rest in peace, Dolly Parton. Thank you for showing us what a masterclass in walking through life actually looks like.

I leave you with one of Dolly’s tunes that won’t leave my head: Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, Jolene, but I find myself singing Lurlene, Lurlene, Lurlene. She may be due for a comeback.

The Owner’s Trap – When was your last real vacation?

By Laura Berman Fortgang on August 30, 2026

The Owner’s Trap: Why Your Business Is Only as Big as You Are

When was the last time you tried to take a real vacation? Not a working vacation where you checked your email and had your phone going the whole time — a real vacation, where nobody needed you.

If the answer is Ha, that hasn’t happened in years — or worse, The last time I tried, my business almost fell apart — then you’re stuck in what I call the Owner’s Trap. Today I want to help you climb out.

What Solopreneurs Get Wrong About Their Business

Most solopreneurs, coaches, consultants, and experts think they’re building a business.
What they’re really building is a job.
A job you can’t sell.
A job you can’t quit.
A job you can’t leave for two weeks without the whole thing falling apart.

There’s a huge difference between being self-employed and owning a business.

Self-employment means everything relies on you. You are the load-bearing wall. Nothing happens unless you’re there.

Owning a business — even a one-person business — means you have systems, structures, and offers that don’t require you to be present at every single moment.

Here’s the kicker: this isn’t about getting bigger. You can be beautifully profitable as a one-person shop and still not be in the Owner’s Trap. The trap isn’t about size — it’s about dependency. It’s about whether everything relies on you being switched on.

How You Got Here

You built it this way on purpose, even if you didn’t realize it.

In the beginning, everything was about you. You were the brand. You were the offer. You were the sales team, the admin, the delivery team, the marketing department. And it worked; your presence was the value. Clients hired you because they wanted you.

Here’s what nobody tells you: this model has a ceiling. It could be a dollar amount. It could be a number of clients. Whatever it is, at some point you stop growing. You start suffering. You get resentful. You start getting the Sunday scaries about the business you built. Not your job — the business you built!

Whether you’re a coach with a full one-on-one practice, a consultant charging by the hour, or a corporate leader who’s become the bottleneck on your own team — same trap, different costume. If everything runs through you, everything stops when you do.

Three Practices to Climb Out

Do the “only me” audit.
Sit down and write every single thing you do in your business in a typical week. Every task. Every email. Every meeting. Every proposal. Then ask one question of each item: Is this something only I can do? Not should only I do. Only I can do.

Most of what’s on your list — the scheduling, the invoicing, the admin, the follow-ups, the formatting — is not you. That can be done by someone else, or systematized, or eliminated. Even as a one-person shop, getting yourself out from under everything that isn’t only you changes everything.

Separate your delivery from access.
Right now, most of your offers require you to be there. You’re the teacher, the coach, the deliverer, the everything. So think about other ways to generate revenue that don’t rely on you being in the chair. A membership. A small group. A course. A cohort. Something that delivers more value to more people without demanding more of your time. You don’t need to overhaul everything, but add at least one offer that isn’t dependent on you being live in the room.

Build a business that could survive you being offline for two weeks.
Pick a date six months out. Whether you actually take the time off or not (I won’t be watching) design toward it. What would need to be in place? Automated payments. A support inbox someone else can answer. Client onboarding that doesn’t require you.

When I was writing for Redbook Magazine years ago, I told them I was taking the whole month of August off. Nobody wanted to respect that. They were looking for me. I didn’t return calls. I didn’t answer the phone. I literally took a month off. And it took me a year and a half to get ready for that month. So I know how hard this is, but you can do it.

The Mindset That Makes It Stick

Here’s what I want you to internalize:
You are not your business; you have a business.
The healthiest thing you can do for it — and for you — is to stop being the only load-bearing wall.

Most people wear their over-involvement in the business like a badge of honor. Nothing can happen without me. No one can do it like me. I have to be the one. Some of that is true. Most of it is ego dressed up as devotion. And it’s the exact story that’s keeping you trapped inside a business that can’t grow.

A business that requires you for everything isn’t a business. It’s a very charming prison.

Your Homework This Week

Do the “only me” audit. Take twenty minutes, list what you actually do in a week, and mark each item — only me, or could be systematized, delegated, or deleted. Then pick one thing off that second list, just one, and build a system for it, get it off your plate, or stop doing it entirely.

Because the solopreneurs, consultants, and experts building the most sustainable businesses stopped making their presence the value. They built businesses that could breathe without them. They gave themselves the one thing every stuck owner secretly wants — the freedom to actually leave the room every now and then.

While we’re still in August and it’s still vacation season — go take one. Or plan for a better one next year.

Why Selling Is So Hard – Your worth is not on trial

By Laura Berman Fortgang on August 23, 2026

Why Selling Is So Hard: The Real Reasons You’re Avoiding the Call

How many of you have outreach on your to-do list right now that you’re quietly hoping will just go away?

You know who you are.

If you’re one of my A-List coaches, you know exactly what I’m talking about — we’re in the middle of a sales challenge for the month of August, and the resistance is real. If you’re a consultant, a coach, or anyone else who has to sell yourself for a living, this is for you too.

Because what separates the coaches who talk about their business from the coaches who have a business is simple: the ones with businesses are willing to do the selling.

What Most People Get Wrong About Selling

Most coaches, consultants, and self-employed entrepreneurs think selling is hard because they’re afraid of rejection.

Yes — rejection is part of it. But if it were just rejection, you’d have found a way to get over it by now. We all get ghosted. We all get told no. Most of us have survived way worse in life than a prospect not writing back.

If it’s not the rejection itself, then what is it?

When you sell yourself, every no feels like it’s about you. Not your offer. Not your pricing. Not your timing. You. Your worth. Your value. You doing what you do in the first place — that’s what feels like it’s being judged.

When you sell a product — shampoo, a shoe, a piece of software — a no is about the product. But when it’s about us, we make it about our entire identity. That’s why every outreach feels like standing on the edge of a cliff. It’s not just business; it’s personal, and your nervous system knows it.

The Four Hidden Reasons Selling Feels Impossible

Reason One — You’ve conflated your worth with the outcome.
If they say yes, you’re valuable. If they say no, you’re not. So every outreach becomes a referendum on you as a human being. No wonder you want to avoid it.

Reason Two — You’ve made selling mean something ugly.
You’ve seen too many bro marketers, too many sleazy pitches, too many cringy launches. You’ve decided that selling is manipulation and that’s not you — you won’t do that. Then you resent your business for not growing. But you don’t have to be salesy or manipulative (we’ll get into that).

Reason Three — You’ve never separated yourself from your offer.
Just like the shampoo is a product separate from the company that makes it, your offer is separate from you. But when someone says no to your offer, you experience it as them saying no to you. Not your program. Not your fee. You. So you avoid asking because you can’t afford another vote against your identity this week.

Reason Four — You may actually be afraid of the yes.
This is the one nobody talks about. Because if you get the yes, you have to be visible, you have to deliver, and you have to get results for that person. Rejection is actually more comfortable than getting a yes because the no lets you stay where you are, and the yes demands that you grow.

Three Practices to Get You Moving

Separate your worth from the outcome — on paper. Sit down and literally write this sentence: My worth is not on trial. My offer is. Put it somewhere you can see it before every outreach. When you stop treating a no as a personal indictment, you free yourself to send the next one — and the next one — without dying inside first. Rejection stops being existential. It becomes information and data.

Redefine what selling actually is. Selling is not convincing, not manipulating, and not chasing. Selling is inviting the right person into a solution they already need. That’s it. You have the solution; they have the need. You’re not begging. You’re not tricking. You’re not performing. You’re extending an invitation, and anyone on the other end gets to say yes or no. When you understand this, selling stops feeling gross. It starts feeling generous and like service.

Track the outreach, not the outcomes. Most of you are measuring the wrong thing. You’re tracking who said no, who ghosted you, who didn’t buy. Instead, make your success about the outreaches you made. Because the more outreaches you send over time, the more yeses you’ll get. Stop making the game about closing a sale. Make the game about making the outreach because that’s what you actually control.

The Mindset That Makes It Stick Regarding Selling

Here’s what I want you to internalize: Selling isn’t a personality. It’s a practice.

The coaches who are booked aren’t just the extroverts, or the ones with the loudest personalities, or the ones with the perfect pitch. They’re the ones who keep sending outreach on the days they don’t feel like it. They stopped waiting to feel confident. They stopped waiting to feel ready. They stopped waiting for the perfect offer, the perfect messaging, the perfect script.

They just keep inviting, and they let their worth exist somewhere the market can’t touch.

Your Homework This Week

A-Listers — this one’s for you. Send five outreaches before the end of today. I’m being kind — I actually make my group do twenty. Five outreaches. Not the perfect pitches. Not the five that get answered. Five sent.

Before you send each one, take a breath and tell yourself:
My worth is not on trial; my offer is. I’m just extending an invitation.

The coaches and entrepreneurs who build the businesses you admire figured out the same thing. They didn’t get better at selling because they got braver. They got better because they stopped making every outreach a life-or-death situation. They stopped making it about their identity. They made peace with the truth — that a no is just a no, a yes is just a yes, and the only thing they control is whether or not they sent the outreach in the first place.

Send the outreach. Be consistent. Then selling won’t be so hard.

Tourist, Traveler, or World Changer — Which Are You?

By Laura Berman Fortgang on August 16, 2026

Becoming a World Changer: Purpose, Global Citizenship, and Your 100-Year Legacy

On last week’s Friday Focus, I sat down with Mackenzie Stanton, host of The Nomad CEO podcast and founder of World Changers. By the end of our conversation, I wasn’t just inspired; I was recalculating how I want to spend my remaining years. I hope this does the same for you.

The Girl From Idaho Who Became a Global Citizen

Mackenzie’s story doesn’t start glamorous. She grew up on a small farm in Idaho, raised by a single mom working multiple jobs. At fourteen, a letter arrived inviting her to travel to Australia with a student ambassador program. Her mom, who had every reason to say no, said yes instead — and told Mackenzie they’d find a way to make it happen.

That trip planted a seed that never left her. Two decades later, after building a business, walking away from international travel for six or seven years to grow it, and eventually becoming a full-time nomad, Mackenzie found herself walking down a street in Bali when the name for her company hit her: World Changers.

She told me she was timid about the name at first. Who was she — a girl from Idaho with no fancy credentials — to claim something that big? But she said something that’s stuck with me all week: she came to believe every person carries a world changer within them. The name wasn’t a claim about herself; it was an invitation to everyone else.

Three Ways to Travel — and Three Ways to Live

One of the most useful frameworks Mackenzie shared was about types of travelers, and I think it applies well beyond travel.

There’s the tourist — going somewhere purely to take, to absorb the highlights, to check a box for yourself. Nothing wrong with that; it’s part of being human, and we all need seasons of simply receiving.

Then there’s the traveler — someone who goes deeper, learns the language, eats where locals eat, tries to understand how people actually live rather than just what’s on the postcard.

Then there’s the world changer: someone who does all of that, and then asks a harder question — what can I do, in the time I have here, to leave this place better than I found it? Crucially, Mackenzie was clear that this isn’t about imposing what we think a community needs. It’s about listening first, understanding what people actually want for themselves, and then offering resources, time, or connection in service of that vision — not our own.

Swap “travel” for “life,” and you’ve got a pretty good filter for how to show up anywhere: at work, in your neighborhood, in your own family.

The Long Road to Believing You Can Change

What struck me most was how hard-won this philosophy was for her. Mackenzie spent ten years in an intense battle with addiction, moving in and out of twelve-step programs. Four years into that fight, she remembers driving down a road in North Seattle, genuinely unsure if change was even possible for her, or if she was doomed to repeat the same battles forever.

She did change. It started with rewiring her mind, leaning into community, and rebuilding her physical health so she could show up with real energy. It’s exactly that arc — from doubting she could change at all, to believing everyone has a changer within them — that became the foundation of her work.

Mapping Your Hundred-Year Legacy

Toward the end of our conversation, Mackenzie described a tool she’s been building: a guided exercise to help people map out their legacy as if they’d lived to one hundred, whatever age they are now. It breaks life into three spans:

Life Span — how long you live
Health Span — how healthy you are during those years
Purpose Span — how much of your life you actually spend living out your purpose

The point isn’t to obsess over the finish line. It’s to work backward from it — taking that hundred-year view and reverse-engineering it into a season of days you can actually act on right now.

Your Turn

You don’t need a passport stamp from twenty-two countries to be a world changer. You need a willingness to ask (in whatever room you’re standing in) – what does this place actually need, and what do I have to offer it?

Here’s my challenge for you:
Picture yourself at one hundred years old, looking back.
What’s the purpose span you want to be able to claim?
What’s one small, practical habit you could start this week that moves you toward it?

You don’t have to change the whole world today.
You just have to start owning the impact you make daily.

Catch the full conversation with Mackenzie Stanton on Friday Focus, and find her at worldchangers.me.

You don’t have a strategy problem. You have a feelings problem – The Feelings Gap

By Laura Berman Fortgang on August 9, 2026

The Feelings Gap: Why Emotions Are the Real Bottleneck in Your Business

What’s on your to-do list that you are quietly not doing?

The sales call you should have made three weeks ago.
The follow-up email you keep rewriting and deleting.
The pitch you’re afraid to send.
The offer you’ve been meaning to launch for six months.

All the things you’ve been quietly avoiding.

Now be honest — Is it because you don’t know how to do it? Or is it because of how you feel about doing it?

Today we’re talking about The Feelings Gap.

I want to make a case that the biggest bottleneck to your business and your success isn’t a lack of business acumen.
It’s not that you don’t know what to do.
It’s the emotions about doing it — the ones you haven’t yet learned to navigate.

The Reframe

Most entrepreneurs — and honestly most professionals — think business success is all about business skills.
Learn the marketing. Master the pitch. Build the funnel. Refine the offer. Get better at closing.

Those things matter, but they’re not what’s stopping you.

What’s stopping you is that pit in your stomach before you hit send.
That dread when you sit down to write the sales copy.
The disappointment you can’t quite shake from someone who said no a few weeks ago.
The anxiety about the prospect who ghosted you.
The rejection wound you didn’t even realize was still active.

Those emotions aren’t just unpleasant. They quietly determine what your business actually looks like because they quietly determine what you’re willing to do and what you’re not.

Dr. Marc Brackett, the emotional intelligence researcher at Yale, has done fascinating work studying this for decades. He talks about students at Ivy League schools: they all have great grades, they’re all really smart, they all know what to do. So why do some make it and some don’t? The differentiator wasn’t intelligence, and it wasn’t work ethic. It was their ability to recognize, name, and manage what they were feeling.

That’s the difference, and it’s the difference in your business too.

Emotions in a Business Costume

Here’s how it plays out. You know you need to make ten sales calls this week.
Strategically and business-wise, you know that’s the move, and it’s obvious.

Somewhere between knowing what to do and doing it, the emotions show up. Anxiety about being told no. Dread about seeming pushy. Old rejection wounds that you didn’t even realize were still there.

So what happens? You don’t make the calls.

Here’s the sneaky part — you don’t say to yourself, “I’m avoiding this because I’m scared.”
You say, “I need better messaging first.” Or, “I need to fix my CRM.” Or, “I need to redesign my website before I reach out.”

It’s not a strategy problem at all. It’s just avoidance and emotions wearing a costume as a business problem.

If you’re an entrepreneur, this is the difference between succeeding and not. Your business doesn’t grow from what you know; it grows from what you do. When what you do is governed by what you feel, and you don’t do it, your business isn’t growing.

If you’re in a corporate arena — whether it’s firing somebody, leading your team through change, or having a difficult conversation — same mechanism, different meeting.

Three Practices to Close the Gap

Name what you’re actually feeling.
Marc Brackett’s research shows that most people can only name three emotions — happy, sad, angry. But there are hundreds of feelings on the spectrum, and precision matters. Are you sad, or are you actually disappointed? Are you angry, or are you scared? Are you mad, or are you hurt? The more specifically you can name the emotion, the less power it has over you, and the easier it is to move through.

Separate the feeling from the action.
Most people wait to feel okay before they take action. They want everything to feel perfect before they act. But you can feel terrible and still do something. This is doing the hard things. You do it while you feel scared. You do it while you feel uncertain.

Build a recovery ritual.
Rejection is going to happen. Disappointment is guaranteed. So what’s your ritual for shaking it off: A five-minute walk? A journal entry? A workout? A snack? A call with a friend who gets it? Whatever ritual moves the emotion through you instead of letting it pool up and drown your motivation. Without a recovery ritual, one hard “No” can take you offline for a week.

The Mindset That Makes It Stick

Here’s what I want you to internalize:
Emotional intelligence isn’t a soft skill; it’s a hard skill.

In business and in life, it’s one of the most important skills you can develop, especially in this age of AI, where we think we can replace people with machines. Your emotional intelligence is what’s going to keep you in the game.

Business acumen without emotional intelligence is a Ferrari with no driver. You’ve got the best going on, but no one’s driving the car. Most people spend all their money on the car and none on learning how to drive it.

Your Homework This Week

Take one thing you’ve been avoiding — the call, the copy, the pitch, the presentation, the conversation, and ask yourself one question: What am I actually feeling about this?

Not thinking. Not planning. Feeling.
Name it as specifically as you can.
Then — without waiting for the feeling to go away — do one small piece of the thing you’ve been avoiding.

Because the people building the boldest, most enduring businesses and careers in the world became more emotionally fluent. They learned to feel it and do it — at the same time.
You can do that too.

The Compliment Trap: Why Praise Is Making You Worse at Your Job

By Laura Berman Fortgang on August 2, 2026

When was the last time somebody told you your work was amazing? Your presentation was brilliant. Your pitch was fantastic. Your leadership was inspiring. Your service was the best they’d ever experienced.

Felt good, right?

Here’s the uncomfortable question — when you got that compliment, what did you actually learn? I want to make a case that’s going to sting a little. Getting praise may actually be quietly making you worse at your job.

Welcome to The Compliment Trap.

The Reframe

Most people think praise is the goal. It’s the confirmation that you’re doing everything right, the signal that you’ve arrived, that you can relax. So they optimize their professional life around getting more of it.

But praise is essentially useless as a growth tool.

It feels good; I’m not knocking that. Take it in, enjoy it – but there’s nothing you can act on.
“Great job” doesn’t tell you specifically what worked so you can repeat it.
“Loved it” doesn’t tell you what to do more of.
“You’re amazing” doesn’t tell you where the sharp edge of your growth is.

If you’re an entrepreneur, this hits especially hard because your clients love you. They tell you you’re wonderful. They send you glowing testimonials. But they would actually do you a better service by telling you what could be improved, so you could make your offer better, your business tighter, your delivery stronger. Instead, you slowly become allergic to the discomfort that would take you to the next level.

If you’re in corporate, same trap. Your boss says “nice work.” Your peers tell you you’re crushing it. Everybody’s happy. But what did you learn? What’s the specific skill you still need to develop? What’s the thing you’re doing well that you should repeat? Nobody wants to be the person who volunteers that information.

Learning to Give — and Get — Real Feedback

I learned this from a friend when we were both in the theater. I went to see her in a show and afterward said, “Oh my god, you were so great.” She said, “Well, what was great about it?”

At first I thought she was being a little egotistical. But then I realized she was teaching me how to give good feedback. Real feedback names what specifically worked so the person can do it again, and names what didn’t so they can improve. Vague praise doesn’t help anyone.

That conversation changed how I ask for feedback too.

Why We Get So Much Praise and So Little Truth

Giving useful feedback is hard; it’s socially expensive. Nobody wants to be the one who tells you your pitch runs too long, your emails come across as cold, or the thing you’re most proud of is actually holding you back.

People default to praise. Praise is safe, keeps the relationship warm, makes the giver feel generous and the receiver feel good. Everybody wins in the short term, and nobody wins in the long term.

Meanwhile, the people getting better fastest — the ones you watch moving up and forward — stopped waiting for feedback to come to them. They’re actively hunting for it. They’re pulling uncomfortable truths out of people who would otherwise never volunteer them.

Here’s the secret about those people: They’ve built a taste for the useful sting.

The Compliment Trap: Why Praise Is Making You Worse at Your Job by Laura Berman Fortgang

Have you ever watched Chopped? Whenever the judges give feedback to the chefs, the smart ones don’t fight back with “Yeah, but I tried.” They say, “Yes, chef.” They take the little sting, they swallow it, and they learn from it. That little wince you feel when someone tells you something true you didn’t want to hear? That’s a growth point; we want more of that.

Three Practices to Escape the Trap

Ask better questions. Stop asking, “What did you think?” That question invites praise. Instead ask: What would you do differently? What was the weakest part? If I paid you to find something wrong with this, what would you point to? These questions give people permission to give you what you actually need.

Pick two trusted truth-tellers. You don’t need feedback from everyone. Find two or three people who love you enough to tell you the truth, and are sharp enough to see what most people miss. Not your mom. Not your best friend who loves everything you do. Real truth-tellers. Cultivate those relationships on purpose.

Separate the compliment from the celebration. When someone praises you, take it, run with it, enjoy the praise. But don’t confuse it for data. Compliments feed your soul. Feedback grows your work. Both matter, but they do very different jobs.

The Mindset That Makes It Stick

You can’t get better at what you’re already being praised for.
You can only get better at what you’re willing to look at honestly.

The most successful people I know have a higher tolerance for that little sting — for that Yes, chef. They’ve learned to hear the part that isn’t working without getting defensive.

That shift — from craving praise to hunting truth — is one of the biggest career unlocks I know.

Your Homework This Week

Pick one piece of work you’re proud of: a presentation, a launch, a project. Go to one of your truth-tellers and ask: “What’s the one thing you’d change if you were doing this instead of me?” Not “What did you think?”

When they tell you — don’t defend and don’t explain. Just listen (Yes, chef).

Notice: Did you wince? Good. That wince is exactly where your next level lives.

People building the boldest, best, most enduring work in the world figured out the same thing. They stopped being addicted to applause and they got hungry for the useful sting.