ABOUT LARRY

I listened to the same motivational tape for forty years. It didn't change me.

The Background Story

In 1982, my sister handed me a cassette tape of a Jim Rohn seminar. I listened to that tape hundreds of times over the next forty years. I could quote it.

It made me feel better every time I played it. It never changed how I lived. I used forty years of mindset and motivation for comfort and to get me through some tough stretches.

It faded every time. I never used it to take a hard look at myself.

Education and Thirty Years of Corporate Life

I grew up in Elyria, Ohio. My father was a machinist. A perfectionist. The belief underneath all of it was simple. Work hard and you'll succeed. I carried that belief into every school and job I had for the next forty years.

BS in Engineering Physics, University of Toledo. MS in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Northwestern University. Both with honors. After graduate school at Northwestern, I went to work at IBM. I started as a software engineer and moved into business and technical strategy for multi-billion-dollar divisions.

While at IBM, I earned an executive MBA at Duke. Also with honors. Years later, I left IBM for Amazon Web Services (AWS) and led marketing for one of the fastest-growing new cloud services the company had seen. I then served as head of product marketing for a couple cloud software companies.

I checked every box. Top performer in everything I did. But I wasn't happy, and I didn't recognize that I wasn't. When work got hard, I reached for the tapes. I felt better for a while, then it faded.

Three Layoffs

In 2021, I was downsized. My work was strong. I was laid off anyway.

Two months later I paid for personal coaching. I wrote down my needs, my beliefs, and my values. It helped me see things I didn't see before. But it felt like an intellectual exercise, and after a few months it faded.

Two more layoffs followed at two cloud software companies. My work was excellent every time. The last time, I wrote the company's three-year vision with the CXO's and led all of the marketing for a major announcement with an industry goliath. I was let go the very next day.

Once is business. Twice stings. Three in a row told me something.

The problem wasn't my performance. The problem was the belief I carried since childhood, that hard work and performing for others keep you safe. My own life proved it wrong.

Writing the Book

Early in 2025, I went back to the coaching notes I let fade. I joined a book-writing bootcamp, and for the first time I did the inner work I avoided for forty years. I traced my limiting beliefs back to where they came from. I named them. I wrote new ones.

That book became Mid Life Mind Shift. It reached number one best seller in three Amazon categories.

Forty years of listening to someone else's words gave me comfort. One year of writing my own changed how I live. That's why every lesson I build ends with the agent or broker writing something in their own words.

My Real Estate Experience

To earn money for college, I worked in construction for a residential building company owned by my sister and her husband. Over a few summers and college breaks, I helped frame more than 100 houses. I learned other trades as well and did everything with my father's precision.

Year's later in between corporate jobs, I got my North Carolina mortgage license and sold mortgages for about a year. I obtained a license to sell life, long-term care, and Medicare insurance. And I bought foreclosed houses at auction, renovated some myself and others using a team of trades workers. I sold them myself, without an agent.

In 2008, Barbara and I took a home staging course, and we started a home staging company together. For years we put twenty to forty hours a week into staging on top of full-time corporate jobs. It put me in hundreds of houses beside agents and the sellers they represented.

I never held a real estate license, and I never sold a house for a client. I sat in every seat except the agent's.

What I Learned Working Beside Agents

I watched one pressure play out over and over. A seller wants the staging changed to suit their own taste. The listing agent wants to keep that seller happy, and that's the right instinct. But the staging is there for the buyers, not the sellers.

My paycheck didn't depend on the sale of that house, so I could ask a different question: "Will this change stop a buyer from booking a showing, or change the timing or price of their offer?" In nearly every case the answer was no. Once the seller and the agent heard the question, the conversation changed.

Asking it was easy for me. My income wasn't on the line. When your own commission is on the line, it's hard to remember good advice in the moment. The question has to come from who you are.

What I Do Now

I'm an identity coach for real estate agents and the brokers who lead them.

Most coaching in this industry works on what you do. Sales closing scripts, systems, accountability, lead generation, and how to use AI to automate the tasks. The good coaches do it well, and I'd tell you to go learn from them.

I work one level down, on who's doing it. I don't mean how you feel about it. Confidence and motivation are real, and they're gone by Wednesday. I mean who you are in the conversation when it gets tense.

The work runs on two frameworks. The Six Mind Shifts™ are your side: your needs, beliefs, values, roles, vision, and legacy. The Six Decision Drivers™ are the client's side, the same six areas read in the person across the table. Your side comes first. You can't read what a client is protecting while you're busy protecting yourself.

For brokers and team leaders, it's the same two frameworks, now focused on you and the agents you lead.

Why I Called It Unforgettable

Most agents close the deal well and are forgotten anyway.

I want a client to say this about you: "I'll never forget how my agent made me feel when we were making the biggest financial decision of our lives. You need to work with my agent too."

Not long ago I had a canvas made that reads "Barbara Heathcote | Sewing Room," and I hung it in Barbara's sewing room without telling her. It took her days to notice. It cost almost nothing, and it's a memory we'll both keep forever. She's told all of her friends.

Being unforgettable isn't grand. It's specific, it's personal, and you do it on purpose. And people remember you and tell their story about you.