The Healthy Enterprise

In this episode, Laura Lampa, CEO of LML StoryLab Consulting, shares her journey from a scientist to a communication expert in the life sciences sector. She discusses the importance of effective communication in science, her transition to entrepreneurship, and the challenges of being a solopreneur. Laura emphasizes the significance of networking, leveraging AI in her work, and maintaining a work-life balance. She also provides valuable advice for aspiring entrepreneurs and shares her vision for the future of her business.

Chapters:
00:00 Introduction to Laura Lampa and LML StoryLab
02:54 Journey from Science to Communication
05:55 The Transition to Entrepreneurship
09:02 Challenges of Solopreneurship
12:01 Networking and Building Relationships
15:00 Vision for the Future of LML StoryLab
18:11 Leveraging AI in Communication
20:57 Advice for Aspiring Entrepreneurs
23:54 Conclusion and Key Takeaways

Guest Information:
  • Guest's Name:Laura Lampa 
  • Guest's Title/Position: Founder and CEO
  • Guest's Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauralampa/
  • Company / Affiliation: LML StoryLab Consulting https://lmlstorylab.com/home
  • Guest's Bio: Laura Lampa is the Founder and CEO of LML StoryLab Consulting, where she helps mission-driven companies in agriculture, fermentation, and sustainability tell compelling stories that inspire action. With over 18 years of experience spanning global organizations and startups—including Monsanto, Kaiser Permanente, Bayer Crop Science, and Ginkgo Bioworks—Laura brings a unique blend of scientific expertise and communications leadership. A former bench scientist turned strategist, she specializes in science communication, change management, and stakeholder engagement, empowering organizations to connect authentically and drive meaningful impact.
Takeaways:
  • Laura Lampa transitioned from a scientist to a communication expert.
  • Effective communication can unlock conversations and connections.
  • Networking is crucial for building relationships and finding clients.
  • AI can be a strategic partner in writing and communication.
  • Time management is a significant challenge for solopreneurs.
  • Maintaining professional connections helps avoid loneliness.
  • It's important to know your limits as a solopreneur.
  • You can develop tools and templates for clients to use independently.
  • Showing up consistently builds credibility and trust.
  • Entrepreneurship requires a willingness to take risks and embrace challenges.


Creators and Guests

Host
Heath Fletcher
With over 30 years in creative marketing and visual storytelling, I’ve built a career on turning ideas into impact. From brand transformation to media production, podcast development, and outreach strategies, I craft compelling narratives that don’t just capture attention—they accelerate growth and drive measurable results.
Guest
Laura Lampa
Laura Lampa is the Founder and CEO of LML StoryLab Consulting, where she helps mission-driven companies in agriculture, fermentation, and sustainability tell compelling stories that inspire action. With over 18 years of experience spanning global organizations and startups—including Monsanto, Kaiser Permanente, Bayer Crop Science, and Ginkgo Bioworks—Laura brings a unique blend of scientific expertise and communications leadership. A former bench scientist turned strategist, she specializes in science communication, change management, and stakeholder engagement, empowering organizations to connect authentically and drive meaningful impact.
Producer
Meghna Deshraj
Meghna Deshraj is the CEO and Founder of Bullzeye Growth Partners, where she partners with eCommerce brands, healthcare institutions, and small businesses to scale profitably without outside funding. Under her leadership, Bullzeye has driven over $580M in annual growth and more than $1B in collective direct revenue for its clients. With a background spanning corporate strategy, IT, finance, and process optimization, Meghna brings a unique blend of data-driven marketing expertise and operational leadership. A Certified Six Sigma Black Belt with deep experience in program management and business transformation, she has successfully led global teams, large-scale integrations, and organizational change initiatives. Her superpower lies in marketing strategy and consulting, fueled by a passion for helping businesses grow through innovation, efficiency, and strong client relationships.

What is The Healthy Enterprise?

Join host Heath Fletcher on The Healthy Enterprise as he explores how healthcare leaders and innovators are transforming the industry from the inside out. Whether you’re a provider, tech entrepreneur, marketing strategist, or industry executive, these conversations deliver actionable strategies, innovative solutions, and human-centered insights to help you grow, lead, and make a lasting impact.

Created and produced by Bullzeye Growth Partners — let’s make something great together.

Heath Fletcher (00:13)
Hello there, welcome to the Healthy Enterprise. Thanks for ⁓ listening. If you're a return listener, thanks for coming back. And if this is your first time, then welcome to the show. My guest today is Laura Lampa. She's the owner and CEO of LML Consulting. She specializes in science, communication, and precision storytelling. She is a scientist turned communicator and Laura's approach

plans analytical precision with narrative depth to transform complexity into clarity. So let's meet Laura.

Okay, Laura, thank you for joining me today on this episode. Looking forward to hearing about what you do and your experience working in the healthcare industry. And ⁓ yeah, so why don't you introduce yourself to our listeners and ⁓ your company.

Laura Lampa (01:14)
Well, thanks for inviting me. really excited to be here. ⁓ I said, my name is Laura Lampe and I started a company called LML StoryLab Consulting ⁓ just about a year ago now. And I actually help people in the ag tech and food technology space, so the life science space and food technology with better communications and their marketing strategy.

Heath Fletcher (01:36)
Excellent. that's ⁓ reading through your history. That's not where you started. You actually started in science.

Laura Lampa (01:44)
I started in science. So I actually started as a scientist at the bench. I studied microbiology, thought I wanted to be a bench scientist my whole entire life. And, you know, as you start to grow in your career, you get pulled away from the bench and you start leading teams and strategy and things like this. And that's where I sort of learned, oh, actually, the skill that I really want to develop and that really is engaging me is communication. I just, I felt like

You can unlock so many conversations, ways of thinking and connections with others just in the way that you select a certain word over another, just in the way that you communicate and the visuals that you design. So that was really engaging and that's sort of what led me ultimately to transition over to communications.

Heath Fletcher (02:35)
Okay. Well, that seems like a natural fit then. Okay. So I know just so we're clear being on the bench, ⁓ isn't sitting there waiting for your turn on the court, right? Your, ⁓ bench is you're actually working at the lab stations.

Laura Lampa (02:50)
Yup, Bench is the lab station. Doing the hands-on stuff.

Heath Fletcher (02:54)
Right. And what part of that, what part of that did you like? There was aspects of that that you enjoyed and I guess what was your passion about biology?

Laura Lampa (03:05)
I think that there's this, I've always had this natural curiosity and want to know everything about anything. And that offered the opportunity to answer some of those questions. You ask these questions when you're a kid, right? Everybody's had their parents tell you just because, just because that's the way it is. I always feel that's so unsatisfactory. And so I saw science as a vehicle to kind of answer those questions for myself and ask those better questions.

So that's really what fueled the passion there. And then the other piece of that is wanting to help other people, whether that be designing better medicines or better food. ⁓ That was really a driving force of me going into science.

Heath Fletcher (03:49)
Is that the area of science that you were actually working in?

Laura Lampa (03:52)
I was working in AgTech space and my very first job was at Monsanto Company actually. ⁓ And I was just doing some very entry level work. And then I left and I went to Kaiser Permanente, tried my hand at clinical. I was working in their in vitro fertilization lab, helping others have babies. And it was satisfying, but I really missed basic research. And so I went off and I found an early stage startup called AgRequest.

located in Davis, California at the time. And we were working on biologicals. So instead of making crop protection products of pesticides, fungicides, or even probiotics for plants, instead of doing that out of chemistry, we were making those out of microbes, finding the natural compounds that microbes make in order to make plants more healthy and resilient to pests and disease naturally. Yeah.

Heath Fletcher (04:51)
Yeah, And so then at what point did you wake up one day and go, hmm, I really feel this urge, entrepreneurial urge to work for myself and run my own business.

Laura Lampa (05:03)
Well,

that is a little bit of a longer story.

Heath Fletcher (05:06)
Okay, well, we got some time to fill, so let's hear it.

Laura Lampa (05:12)
So after working at AgroQuest, I'll start there. I was there for about five years and I got to wear a lot of hats as you do at a small startup. I got to rotate through all the labs. You know, I always kind of describe it as instead of getting my PhD formally, I kind of got my mini PhD on the job.

Heath Fletcher (05:27)
great.

Laura Lampa (05:28)
Five

years into that bear crop science purchased us and I was able to just at that time wear one hat Which maybe seems boring to some people who enjoy the thrill of novelty? but what that really enabled me to do is start to focus on my development and what I want to do next and One of the things that got thrown into my lap at that time was hey you like to talk about what we do here Why don't you be one of the tour guides and at that time?

Our site was called the global headquarters of biologics for Bayer Crop Science. So we were hosting industry nights, we were hosting friends and family nights, we were inviting media legislators, in addition to our own internal people, technical and non, who wanted to come and visit California and see what this new biologics division was all about, business unit. We were getting something like 3,000 plus visitors a year. ⁓

Heath Fletcher (06:23)
What?

Laura Lampa (06:25)
It was insane. ⁓ It was me and a few others who were hardcore dedicated to, know, doing these tours. ⁓

Heath Fletcher (06:32)
Right.

Was it on the list with Disneyland and everything else?

Laura Lampa (06:37)
We're

going to stop by.

Heath Fletcher (06:40)
to stop over for a happy hour at bear corp or whatever.

Laura Lampa (06:47)
We were putting on so many events, And then it was interesting too. ⁓ We were the first crop science large site. They had a little field station, so we were the big first big research center in California. so people, like our sales team, for example, it was like, meet your quotas and we'll have our next team meeting in California at Biologics.

Heath Fletcher (07:11)
⁓

wow. Okay, yeah.

Laura Lampa (07:13)
So it's a little bit of treat sometimes too, right? That's how we ended up getting so many visitors. But through giving all those tours and being at capacity and trying to recruit other scientists to give tours, we started to realize a couple of things. A, we weren't good at communicating our science to all sorts of people. We were good at communicating science to ourselves, right? To other scientists or other people at technical.

And then the other piece of that was other scientists we found were hesitant to provide tours because they were also nervous. They were nervous about engaging legislators or they were nervous about engaging media or they were nervous about engaging executives. Like how do you talk about it without being nervous? So we actually put together me and two other scientists, volunteer scientists.

we put together a curriculum teaching others to be better science communicators and through those experiences I started to become a better communicator and realizing the power of words. I started having much more engaging conversations with people on my tours. It just became really fun. So that's when it clicked to me that, ⁓ this is science communication. I really like this. Well, that's a piece of science communication, right? I really like this. How do I keep going? How do I keep pursuing that?

So then I started to pair up with different functional groups within our organization, regulatory affairs, government affairs, and going out and doing external facing engagements with them, ⁓ seeing if I could tag along on any sort of internal projects that they had. That eventually led me to being responsible for developing and writing one of our internal science newsletters, communicating our sites to the rest of the organization, and mainly targeting our non-technical employees.

So that was a ton of fun, I loved it. 11 years into Bayer, our business unit was divested to a synthetic biology company called Ginkgo Bioworks. And by that time, in my career, I had went from the bench to team leadership, lab leadership, to R &D leadership, and then I started to go into more operations and business enablement roles. And so when we transitioned companies,

I was in that business enablement team. So I was given the task of doing change management and change communication. Which eventually got the attention of our head of HR. said, do you want to come and do a short-term assignment with me and help me put together a communication strategy for the team? So I did that, which eventually led me to doing internal comms. Our head of internal comms said, do you want to just do this full-time? I said, sure, why not? So that's how I fully transitioned.

⁓ The sad part, the sad story, the sad story of this is, and also the impetus for me starting my own business was when Ginkgo went through a downturn, like so many others in the industry right now, right? They had to cut back quite a bit. And I was part of the first random layoffs where they laid off around 35 % of their workforce. Wasn't a total surprise, ⁓ but it did come sooner than anticipated. And so for me,

I said, God, you know, like I do not want to stop the progress that I've made over the years, right? It me all these years to finally officially transition over. want to keep going. And I kept seeing all these posts online, you know, been looking for a job. It's been six months. It's been nine months. It's been a year. And I I just do not want to, I don't want to wait. I want to keep going. I want to keep growing. So I started my LLC.

Heath Fletcher (10:35)
Yeah.

nice. And so that's where LML StoryLab began. And how did you find that transition going from working in a corporate environment to working for yourself? I mean, it's a little lonelier.

Laura Lampa (11:10)
It's a lot. Yeah, it was actually not a super easy transition. Like you said, it's lonely. I had to adjust to not having coworkers. know, just last year, last summer, on my one year anniversary. Yeah, it's been a roller coaster ride to be honest with you.

Heath Fletcher (11:20)
What year was that? Did you do that? Last year. Okay. Right.

You

Laura Lampa (11:35)
You don't realize how much other functions do for you when you work for an enterprise. ⁓

Heath Fletcher (11:46)
You mean

all the other operational departments and things like that?

Laura Lampa (11:50)
Counting, the bookkeeping, the business development, the marketing of it all. It's just, now you're a solopreneur, you're doing it on your own.

Heath Fletcher (12:01)
Yeah, you're doing all those things. You're wearing every one of those hats.

Laura Lampa (12:05)
wearing

all those hats that you've never worn before, right? And you're learning it on the fly. You're learning it while you're doing it. So.

Heath Fletcher (12:16)
So which ones hit you the hardest? What's your biggest obstacle? I mean, at the beginning, what was your biggest obstacle?

Laura Lampa (12:25)
way time management. I'm usually pretty good at time management. If you look at my calendar, I'm one of those people who color code everything. schedule when you're going to go up, get up and take a walk. You schedule when you're going to have your lunch, all of these things. But I say time management because I didn't know how long some of these things would even take me. I had never done them before. So I found myself

Heath Fletcher (12:28)
Hmm.

Right.

Right.

Laura Lampa (12:55)
working through breaks that I had scheduled for myself, ⁓ struggling to understand how a piece of software works, or a new technology, or what the best platform was to use for some of these things, bookkeeping and what have you and whatnot. So time management was a big thing for me in the beginning.

Heath Fletcher (13:18)
Yeah. And the beginning is always a steep learning curve too. Like you said, you're bringing on, you're creating new systems, you're creating ⁓ new ways of doing things, reorganizing yourself. Yeah. It's a huge step in ⁓ becoming a solopreneur and working with yourself. ⁓ I don't know about you, I mean, I've been down there before myself and ⁓ distractions for me were a lot, you know, it's like,

⁓ your phone rings, or someone's come, you know, some, it's somebody, you know, you have a conversation. Then you think, I should make something to eat. And I don't know. You just kind of like things pop up and then, know, like, ⁓ I forgot to throw my clothes in the dryer, you know, cause you're also at home. And so you got all this house stuff around you that reminding you to do things. You're running into that right now.

Laura Lampa (14:10)
gosh, you know the funny thing is, yes and, you know, your coworkers, I have two cats. So those are my coworkers and they love to sit on my lap. They're not used to me being home full time.

Heath Fletcher (14:21)
And they're

really inappropriate because they're always laying down on your desk, right? Good thing your other co-workers didn't do that. Then you'd really need an HR department.

Laura Lampa (14:35)
But yeah, think, you know, it was, and then to your other point, right, you're working alone and so you don't have that same network that you do. I think that was another big challenge for me. So ⁓ finding or making the space to stay really active in professional networks or in professional communication circles, you know, maintaining.

Heath Fletcher (14:36)
you

Laura Lampa (15:00)
a pulse on what's happening in the industry that I serve. All of those things take time. ⁓ And you just, you figure out how to plug it into your day somehow.

Heath Fletcher (15:11)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And then I guess you had another layer is that, you know, you came from science, which is very collaborative environment. You're always working with others, connecting with others, sharing data. ⁓ and now, and, and now you're not as collaborative as space. I mean, it's collaborative when you're working with somebody like a client, but when you're not, there's no one really else to kind of bounce ideas off too. So that can be tough.

Laura Lampa (15:39)
Yeah, it can feel isolating, but I think there's a lot of strategies that you can employ in order to make it not so isolating. ⁓ One thing is networking and not just in the traditional sense. I remember having a past colleague reach out to me and she said, who would you recommend me to network with? And I said, well, what do you mean? And she says, well, who would be strategic for me?

And I thought, don't know because I don't think of networking that way. Right? When I'm doing it's because I sincerely care about cultivating the relationship or reigniting the relationship, maybe if it's been a while, because I like that person, because I respected that person, because I think that person has something of value to offer me in terms of maybe advice or whatever. Right? And so I think it's about

you know, mentally staying plugged in, also continuing to build those relationships or some of those strategies that are going to be helpful for you if you want to ever be a solopreneur. If anyone out there is listening.

Heath Fletcher (16:49)
And now networking for you also means sales, right? It's sales and marketing and pitching yourself, pitching your company and networking that way. So not only networking with other experts that you collaborate with, but also networking so that you can find new clients.

Laura Lampa (17:08)
Yeah, and that's the great thing about networking with people that are already in your circle is you get the opportunity to safely tell them what you're up to. They already know, they're not judging you. ⁓ But they give you that practice for when you go do it cold or to somebody new that you've never met before. yep.

Heath Fletcher (17:30)
Okay, so tell me now what's ⁓ the vision? What do want to do with LML? Tell me about your two-year goals and what are your five-year goals from here?

Laura Lampa (17:43)
Gosh, so my vision looking ahead, like I told you, spent most of my career, all my career focused on Ag Tech, right? And I'm really, really proud of the work that I've done in that space. I think looking ahead, my vision is to become even a more better, well-rounded communicator across the full spectrum of life sciences. So for me, that means deepening my knowledge in areas like pharmaceutical space.

really understanding how communication needs shift across different parts of the industry. So, you know, one of my goals is to start working with within pharmaceuticals ⁓ and really understanding what it means to connect to patients, to doctors, to people that are associated with the healthcare industry.

and not just growers, farmers, distributors, and people who I normally think about in ag tech. And then the other piece of it is growing it in a way that's sustainable for me. So there's only one of me, right? So I can't be a fractional CMO for five different people. It's just not gonna work. I'm not gonna have the bandwidth. I'll burn out. So I think about ways, how can I grow my business?

How can I keep my name out there and do it in a really sustainable way, but also in a way that speaks to my values and what I care about. So I think about things like, well, what does it mean to grow my business in a way maybe I'm developing tools and templates so people can go out and develop their own communication strategies without me being their hands on. I just kind of give them the tools to go and do that and think about it, a framework, if you will. Or what does it mean to build

and develop workshops so that I could reach a lot of people at once, but still have a big impact, right? I think about things like that.

Heath Fletcher (19:44)
Yeah, workshops like engaging with people, whether it's virtual or in person too, right? Do you find where you, geographically where you are, you have access to a lot of ⁓ networking opportunities?

Laura Lampa (19:50)
Yep.

In Northern California, I feel that there's quite a bit of opportunity and networks here. But you know, I've also built really powerful connections online with people in Canada or other parts of the United States. ⁓ But it really does take, you you being very intentional ⁓ and focused and maintaining that, right? Like, I'll put it on my calendar. I'll put a reminder on my calendar. Reach out to so-and-so. ⁓

Reach out to three people today, right? It's part of my goals. It's part of my goals.

Heath Fletcher (20:35)
Right. Which is smart. Cause I mean, it's easy to just sort of, you know, the day goes by to, you know, be busy with a lot of, ⁓ variety of different things. And without those kinds of reminders, they kind of slip past and you think, I'll do it tomorrow. And then next thing you know, three weeks, four weeks have gone by and you know, you've lost that sort of like momentum. Yeah.

Laura Lampa (20:57)
Yeah, we do in our personal relationships all the time, right? You mean to reach out to your friend, your mom or whatever and then you realize, it's 10 o'clock at night. Well, it's too late now. I'll do it tomorrow. And same thing all over again. But if I find, if I schedule it, make it part of my daily tasks, then it gets done. ⁓

Heath Fletcher (21:17)
Have you found any resources, books or podcasts or anything that you subscribe to or have picked up that have given you some techniques to implement?

Laura Lampa (21:28)
Hmm, you know one of the books I actually pulled them down on my off of my bookshelf because I wanted to show I want to share them One of books that I really highly

Heath Fletcher (21:37)
right on.

Don't be such

a scientist.

Laura Lampa (21:43)
He's such a scientist. So, you know, it's geared towards people who are working in science or technical fields, but I actually think it's good for anybody to read. It's pretty funny the way it's written. It's pretty insightful. And, you know, the author, Randy Olson, he gives a really nice reminder that to reach people, you know, it's not being technical. It's not being, you know, logical. It really is through authenticity and personal connection. And then the other one that I really liked, you know, especially if you're

kind of going into leadership or whatever is. ⁓ Love is a business strategy. Have you ever read this one? This is great. So this kind of challenges the way you think about traditional leadership and it talks a lot more about leading with empathy and shaping your culture through empathy and trust. So this is a really good one too. I enjoyed it.

Heath Fletcher (22:19)
No.

That's, those are great. That's great. Thanks for sharing those. ⁓ yeah, they're, yeah, both, actually both titles are very intriguing, like right out of the gate. So, ⁓ yeah, I love the part we're talking about scientists, you know, don't be such a scientist. I mean, it's, it's kind of like, don't be such an engineer or don't be such a, well, don't be such a marketer. I mean, you can probably put any term in front of, know, behind that sentence. And, and we do get

wrapped up in our work speak, you know, depending, doesn't matter where you are. And in some cases, it's actually, it's actually useful if you are actually speaking to, you're a scientist and you're speaking to a bunch of scientists, it's, it's like a science party, right? But if you're not, you know, in any, you know, engineers having an engineering party, you know, and everyone else, anyone else who's standing there going, I don't even

Laura Lampa (23:30)
So are you talking about?

Heath Fletcher (23:32)
Yeah,

but you have to remember that when you're talking about a subject like science, but your audience isn't scientists, the message has to change. The way you say things does have to change. It's a very, very important part about communications, which I think is what you're building an expertise in,

Laura Lampa (23:54)
Yeah, it's so true. And you know, one thing I learned, even amongst scientists, you know, we could use the same term or the same acronym, but if you don't define it upfront and you get too far down the road, you realize you're actually talking about two different things. Like that literally happened in a project once we didn't, you know, me and the girl I was working with, she was in bioinformatics and we were sitting in a meeting with each other and we were using this term. And, you know, she started to contextualize it. said,

Wait, what do you mean when you say that? She goes, well, what do you mean? ⁓ I said, when I or any other biologist says this term, this is what we mean. She goes, my God, that's not how we use that term in bioinformatics.

Heath Fletcher (24:29)
You

No kidding. Yeah. And if chat GPT was there, he'd say, well, you're both right. But let me clarify. Depending on your perspective, you could use it either way. Yeah. Yeah. It's really interesting. I think that's a really big part about marketing is that, you and communications is that you really were, were translators, right? We're trying to translate ideas.

Laura Lampa (24:48)
I knew it was an ever.

Here's the thing.

Heath Fletcher (25:10)
from one person or from one sort of concept and delivering that concept or that message to a variety of different audiences. And so what you're doing is always sort of crafting the message so that it's received. Otherwise, goes to deaf ears or it goes over people's heads or it goes.

It's too low, you can dumb it down too much for some audiences. And then sometimes it just sounds too smart for others. And it makes a huge difference, doesn't it?

Laura Lampa (25:55)
It makes all the difference, I would say. Right? Because everybody cares about something different. But here's the funny thing. Here's the thing that I learned through the curriculum that we developed and all the trainings that I've gone through personally and communications and then just my own personal experience. There's always, no matter how different you think you are from somebody or you appear, there's always something. There's a commonality, right, that you can find. So you can learn to speak that other

person's language, you can learn about what they care about, you probably care about it too, and you can present that different angle, that different lens for them to consider. I think that's the other piece too, right? Presenting information in a way where, this is especially science communication, consider this, consider it from this angle. Here's, know, instead of shoving it down people's throats, that's not going to work.

Heath Fletcher (26:52)
You're right. And actually I was just talking to ⁓ a specialist in genetics and our differences between each individual human being are as little as 0.01 % difference genetically from one human to another.

Not a lot. Yeah, very interesting. Yeah. So you're absolutely right about that. Yeah. What are you finding now with, ⁓ cause I mean, do do you're crafting, so you just, you focus more on communication. So you really are crafting that verbal communication or written language or are you working in any other mediums as well? What do mean? Well, audio, you working in audio video?

⁓ graphics and design and visual communications as well.

Laura Lampa (27:44)
Doing some graphic design, visual communication like through PowerPoints and things like this, which I actually love doing.

Heath Fletcher (27:52)
dear.

Laura Lampa (27:55)
But yeah, what I love doing, my sweet spot is actually writing what I think anyways. I think that's my sweet spot.

Heath Fletcher (28:06)
Now, do you leverage AI in your work?

Laura Lampa (28:11)
I do. You know, it's funny because I've heard people be so, you you meet people, either love AI, they hate AI, they fear AI, they don't know what to think about it. And I get into conversations with people like, why? Why don't you like it? You know, I find that people tend to use it as a tool and they'll try it once or twice or maybe even three times, say, oh, it doesn't give me what I want. The way that I leverage it is,

more as a strategic partner, a collaborator. So I've taken the time to actually use whatever platform you want, know, DeepSeek, chat, GPT, cloud. But if you take the time to actually feed it information about you, me, ⁓ here's how old I am, here's what I care about, here are my values, here's some of my past writings, know, tell me what my, you know, tell me what you think of this. And you start like having these conversations with it. When you go to actually

Heath Fletcher (28:45)
Mm-hmm.

Laura Lampa (29:11)
collaborate and write, I find that I could fast track through some of that messy middle part that you get in, the brainstorming, the refining, and you can actually get into the meat and potatoes of it and really start to, ⁓ here's the white space that I want to write about, right?

Heath Fletcher (29:30)
⁓ very interesting. You know what? didn't know that. So your bot needs to get to know you. Yeah. And so really you need to date your bot so that they understand more about what you like, what you're about, how you'd like to talk, how you communicate. That's interesting. That's it. I would imagine too that that would happen organically over time using the same bot or using the same platform.

You would start to understand that over time, but you can fast track it by giving it that information in advance. Like, like, yeah, like a dating analysis. This is my likes and my don't like, so there you go fast. We don't have to mess around with that anymore. Let's just get on with it.

Laura Lampa (30:15)
Speed date your bot. ⁓

Heath Fletcher (30:18)
I think you might have just had your own your book title there. Tips and tricks on how to speed date with your bot. That's good. I actually never heard that before. That's an interesting point ⁓ that because it is smart, it is supposed to ⁓ build on that information and ⁓ and leverage it to simplify the process. That's interesting. ⁓

You're right. And people do fear it. And there was a lot of criticism about, well, did you write that with a bot? So, you know, with, you know, and that you were leveraging chat to do our dirty work for us or to do our work for us. ⁓ but you're right. You still have to, ⁓ you still have to provide the information. You still have to cross check it. You still have to verify that what it wrote was accurate. I mean, I used it today to help with the bio and

It actually got it wrong about somebody, you know, and it had to not read it. It would have gone out and, and, uh, they would have probably contacted me and said, Oh, by the way, I'm actually not the founder and the CEO. I'm just the CEO. But they picked it up. They picked up two job titles from a couple of different bodies of text and it just kind of pulled it all together. Oh, well, he's a CEO and the founder, but it was two different companies. had I not read it, you know, it would have gone out and doesn't look cool. It's, it's, it's.

You know, so you do, you have to kind of just, you got to stay on top of it, even though it's for me, it's doing the typing. I'm a really lousy typer and I find AI for me is like my typist. And yeah. And so I'll actually dictate to chat what I want to write. I'll scribble it out and write it down on my own, but then I'll read it back to chat and have it type it all out for me. And then I'll take it out and edit it.

But that's for me. I'm, I'm a lousy typer.

Laura Lampa (32:17)
I do the exact same thing and I feel like I'm an okay type or I can pretty good. But yeah, and it dictates hears you really well, right? Siri doesn't hear me very well for whatever reason. she jumbles all my words and okay, I'll give her this I do have a slight lisp.

Heath Fletcher (32:28)
awful

You

Laura Lampa (32:39)
But but chat GPT picks up my words so beautifully and yeah, you can just dictate what you want and then work with it That's your rough draft right there. You don't have type it in

Heath Fletcher (32:50)
Yeah, exactly. you know, time saving, you know, you can't, can't, I mean, that's what, that's what the, the sciences community is, is leveraging is the time saving ⁓ capacity that it provides. it crunches data faster than any, anybody can, else can do. And that's just what is, that's what's speeding up right now is the data crunching, right?

Laura Lampa (33:18)
Yeah, absolutely. You know, when we think about how AI is really disrupting, you know, the technology space, healthcare, ag tech or whatever, you know, thinking about how they're using AI driven diagnostics, predictive modeling and speeding up the whole early phase discovery process. mean, if could bring medicines to market or new ag solutions to market in 10 years instead of 15, I mean, that's

It's five more additional years that you can perhaps save somebody's life, right? Or feed additional people. So it's really amazing. It's an amazing tool if it's used right.

Heath Fletcher (33:53)
Absolutely.

Right. Okay. So now you are an entrepreneur. You are running your own company. Now, how, what's, um, are you, what do you do to when, you know, you're working with, with somebody and you don't have the skills in your backpack to deliver, what do you do? Do you kind of, you try and find somebody to collaborate with in order to do that? Or do you just say, it's not my thing and let them go and hunt for themselves?

Laura Lampa (34:31)
It depends on what the ask is. I mean, there's definitely times where I said, you know, not my thing, and I've gotten talked into doing that thing anyway.

Heath Fletcher (34:41)
yeah.

Laura Lampa (34:42)
It's like, okay, I'll take the challenge and it's a growth opportunity. That's part of why it's so essential to build your network so that I can call on people, hey, here's an opportunity. Do you want to buddy up or pair up or at least have somebody to refer that client to? I might not be the right person for you, but I know someone who is. I'll use those strategies.

either partnering up with somebody or just wholesale, you know, like handing it off to another person. ⁓ That doesn't bother me either.

Heath Fletcher (35:19)
Now do you see yourself as an employer one day, you know, with a team of people?

Laura Lampa (35:26)
I would love to get there. I do miss team leadership. I do miss having a team. I miss the relationship building aspect of that. But I'd love to figure out a model where, I don't know, maybe I'm training the trainer and enabling others to start their own businesses. Something like that would be fun.

Heath Fletcher (35:50)
Mm-hmm.

Well, the world's your oyster now because you're a solopreneur and ⁓ there's so many opportunities out there. Yeah, think you're going to do great. Is there anything else you wanted to share with us about LML and yourself or any other sort of words of wisdom for ⁓ new people who are maybe considering taking that?

giant leap of faith out ⁓ of a secure nine to five Monday to Friday job into the world of work all the time.

Laura Lampa (36:32)
Yeah.

Heath Fletcher (36:34)
seven days a week. 14 hours a day sounds fantastic doesn't it?

Laura Lampa (36:42)
I know. But you know, so here's the interesting thing and then I'll get to like, what's my one thing? You know, when I was working for an organization, there's stress there, right? You're busy, you have deadlines and you're committed because you're working there because at some level you're brought into the mission and the vision, you like the people you work with, you know, you're part of a team. Yeah, so you go, go, go. ⁓

Heath Fletcher (37:04)
Yeah, you're a team player, yeah.

Laura Lampa (37:09)
But ⁓ there's a start and stop date or time usually, right? Whether it's nine to five, maybe it stretches nine to seven. But there's a little bit more work-life balance when you're on your own, and especially in the early days when you're just building it, creating your system, setting those all up for yourself, trying to figure out how to do it all on your own. It's a different kind of stress because now you're working all the time, but you're doing it for yourself.

Right?

Heath Fletcher (37:40)
Yeah. And that's probably where you, when you were talking about time management, that's where that, that comes in really a lot more important is that you're time managing your, your, balance between working and living. And the nice thing is you can fit the work into your life, right. And, and, and keep it that way if you're a fairly ⁓ consistent person, but where you can find that balance where maybe you don't work great at.

six in the morning, maybe you work better working, you know, till eight at night. You get up a little later or do something else. You can manage your own schedule, which is really brilliant. and, um, but I think you're right is finding that work life balance because it can get away on you if you don't, if you let it, cause there's, oh, there's never an end to how much you can work. And so you need to kind of limit those limits. No, no, your limit.

Stay with it.

Laura Lampa (38:39)
Yeah, know your limits. And then, you know, find strategies to overcome your limits, I think. So here's my one thing, you know, if somebody said, well, I'm thinking about starting my own business. I don't know if I can do it. I didn't know if I can do it either. I never, I didn't grow up thinking, one day I'm going to be a business owner. I'm going to be an entrepreneur. I never saw myself that way. And even when I first started to conceive of this idea, you know, that negative voice inside my head said, you're crazy.

You can't do this. So my one thing would be a yes you can, but go in with your eyes wide open, know what you're getting into, but absolutely you can and it's really about you know not having the most, you don't have to have the most polished thing going into it. My website sucked, I still think it sucks, know.

It could probably be improved, you know, but who cares? You know, I launched it, I got my name out and I've got four clients right off that. And it's just about showing up steadily but surely doing the work, ⁓ building up your credibility and your trust with people, building your network. And you absolutely can do it. That's the thing.

Heath Fletcher (39:55)
Absolutely. Good advice. Okay, where can people find you and get more information about you or connect with you?

Laura Lampa (40:01)
Well, if you want to connect with me, I'm always on LinkedIn under my name, Laura Lampe. That's where I post pretty regularly content on science, communication, and leadership. And then you can also check out my website, LMLStoryLab.com. And I just started a sub stack, so if you want to read some longer form articles where I kind of dive into where that intersection of work communication and leadership and science kind of meets.

I'm on Substack under my name as well, Laura Lampha.

Heath Fletcher (40:34)
Very good. Well, Laura, thank you so much for sharing your journey with us. And ⁓ I wish you the best of luck with LMML StoryLab and your big career ahead of you. So thanks for joining me today.

Laura Lampa (40:48)
Thanks Keith for having me. It was such a pleasure.

Heath Fletcher (40:54)
Okay, that was great meeting Laura at LML StoryLab Consulting. ⁓ Yeah, she has good points there. Networking is crucial for building relationships and finding clients for her. Also, maintaining professional connections is essential for staying engaged in her industry. It's also a way to avoid some loneliness and ⁓ does foster more ⁓ collaborative relationships. She said AI can be leveraged as a strategic partner in writing. ⁓

She doesn't fear it, she embraces it and finds a way to make it work best for her. Her advice for new entrepreneurs is that ⁓ it's important to manage a work-life balance as a solopreneur. And she gave us two great books to look into, Don't Be Such a Scientist and Love as a Business Strategy. Thank you so much for joining us today and ⁓ stay healthy and we will see you again soon.