Highlands Ranch – Laura Stack, a best-selling author, motivational speaker, company president, talking head for the national media, founder of a national holiday and the mother of three young children, has a secret.
“I’m really lazy,” she confessed between sips of coffee in her immaculate home in Highlands Ranch.
So she makes this deal with herself: She doesn’t goof off or put off work or commitments, so she can preserve time for the things she values most.
What she preaches – productivity at work and home – is what she practices.
“I want to do things with my kids, I want to get massages, I want to get pedicures,” she said. “I don’t want to be busy with work every second of every day.”
Stack juggles clients such as Coors, Microsoft, Coca-Cola, Visa and the Denver Broncos with T-ball games, Girl Scout meetings, church services and “a date” with her husband every Saturday night.
This year Stack founded national Leave the Office Earlier Day on June 2. The point of the day is for workers to buckle down, get their work done quickly and take the extra time off. It promotes productivity rather than putting in hours.
Long before she became an author or a source for CNN, National Public Radio, CBS, NBC, The New York Times, the Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post and scores of magazines, she wanted to be a public speaker.
When Stack was 14, her mother took her to see a talk by high-energy sales guru Zig Zigler, and that’s all it took.
She finished high school at 16. At 17, she taught her first seminar on time management for a defense contractor in Colorado Springs, where she otherwise worked as a secretary.
By 21, she had a master’s degree in business, and by 23, she was running her own company.
Her first book, “Leave the Office Earlier,” has sold 35,000 copies in the United States and has been translated into six languages. The Library Journal named it one of the best business books of 2004.
The follow-up, “Find More Time: How To Organize Your Life, Get Things Done at Home, and Feel Great About It,” is finished and due out in April.
She grew up in Colorado Springs. Her father taught philosophy at the Air Force Academy; her mother was a psychologist who spoke often at conferences.
“She’s that ‘super woman’ we’ve all been hearing about for 20 years; she wants to have it all,” said her mentor, Dianna Booher, a Texas-based communications expert. “In Laura, you find both a competitive, strategic, excellence-driven person and still a very warm person who people are drawn to.”
Elizabeth Orton, a close friend of Stack’s, met her nearly three years ago when Stack did a time-management seminar at Coors Brewing Co. in Golden.
“She has a huge energy level; I thought that was just part of the deal when she was doing her motivational talk, but that’s who Laura is – just a ton of energy and enthusiasm and optimism,” Orton said.
Staff writer Joey Bunch can be reached at 303-820-1174 or jbunch@denverpost.com.
