JULIE LAPEROUSE, 33
Director of talent development,
Baton Rouge Area Chamber
Chief Peacock, Screaming Peacock
For businesses looking to recruit someone to Baton Rouge, Julie Laperouse is on speed dial. She implemented BRAC’s Talent Development Program to recruit and assimilate hundreds of area professionals. Most recently, she launched the online resource for new residents called LIVEcapitalized.com. She also has her own organizational training and motivational company called Screaming Peacock, whose clients include Nissan North America, Wright & Percy and MAPP Construction.
Inspiring book: The Sweet Potato Queens’ Book of Love
This book by Jill Connor Browne gave me the nudge I needed to write my own book. It helped me realize that there is an audience for books about life lessons, creative ideas and even business tips that aren’t so serious.
Major professional accomplishments: Implementation of BRAC’s Talent Development Program including recruitment and assimilation of hundreds of area professionals and launching an online resource for new residents called LIVEcapitalized.com. Founding organizational training and motivational screaming company, Screaming Peacock, with clients including Nissan North America, Wright & Percy, and MAPP Construction. Publishing book, Are You A Screaming Peacock? in 2011.
Volunteer and community involvement: St. Jude Give Thanks Walk committee member, LSU Communication Across the Curriculum community advisory board member, TEDxLSU community advisory team, member of the American Society for Training and Development/Baton Rouge Chapter, founding member of Red Stick Master Minds, member of Our Lady of Mercy Church, DIY expert on WBRZ, wife of Paul Laperouse and mother of three little girls with another baby on the way in January.
When you were a child, what did you want to be when you grew up? I wanted to be a teacher like my mom, which is probably what ultimately led to the creation of Screaming Peacock. Although classroom teaching didn’t end up as my profession, seeing my mother put so many hours into making learning fun for her students is a driving reason I put so many hours into making my Screaming Peacock trainings interesting for the participants.
What was your first job, and what did you learn from it? I was “Julie B Up All Night” at Cajun Country 92.9, the local country music radio station in Jennings where I grew up. I was the overnight DJ, but all my shows were taped in the afternoons so I wasn’t actually at the station all night. I learned how far a positive attitude and willingness to work will get you. I had no business being hired for that job, but I ended up working there throughout high school simply because I did whatever grunt work they needed done. When I graduated, the owner of the station told me that if you could buy stock in people he would buy a thousand shares of Julie Guidry because I was a hard worker. That has stuck with me my entire life. I still think of him in moments like this and hope that he feels his stock has continued to rise.
What is your favorite place for a business lunch in Baton Rouge? I love Chelsea’s for a business lunch. Most of the people there on weekdays are professionals, but it’s less formal than other business lunch spots. Also, you can get cheese fries if you’re having one of those days.
What do you consider your greatest achievement? My friendships. I still keep in touch with my closest friends from every stage of my life. I have a group of friends who I have known for almost thirty years now–since I was four! I still keep in touch with all of them, along with friends from high school, college and from every job I’ve had. I don’t know how people make it in life who don’t have really amazing friends. My group of friends here are mostly from college, with a few others we’ve picked up along the way. Every few months we have an “affirmation lunch” where we meet for lunch on a weekday, order margaritas, and tell each other how smart and pretty we are and celebrate any professional accomplishments. It’s one of the things I most look forward to in life.
The old saying goes, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” Specifically, what are you “being” to make Baton Rouge better? My co-workers often joke that I am everyone’s first friend when they move to Baton Rouge. One service we offer through the talent program at BRAC is touring out-of-state candidates when they come to Baton Rouge to interview for jobs. I think it’s such a privilege to be one of the first people that many professionals meet when they are considering a move here. I get to help them find the places, resources, and people that make this area feel more like home. Having candidates tell me that I helped them make the decision to move here and eased their transition is one of the most amazing outcomes of my work.
What ritual do you do to get pumped up before a big meeting, presentation or pitch? I listen to rap music. In my minivan. Old school Snoop or Cash Money, and sometimes some T.I. or Lil Wayne. My intern has caught me in traffic before.
How many times will you try something before admitting it doesn’t work? Typically two to three. However, I do have this one joke I’ve told in five or six Screaming Peacock presentations thinking it just needs to find the right audience and it might be time to let it die.
What is your best productivity hack? Don’t organize for the sake of organizing. If something can be a little messy and still allow you to function, just leave it alone.
What did you learn the hard way? Owning your own business means that you have to do a lot of things you are not good at, at least at first. In the beginning phases of Screaming Peacock I was doing my own accounting and IT work which are not my strengths at all. I had so many screw up moments, particularly with my website, and all I could think in those moments was, “I just want to do my trainings!” I definitely learned a lot, but will never do it again if I can help it.
What does your job entail that would shock customers or clients if they knew about it? I spend a lot of time sitting on the floor making packets. One initiative out of the talent program at BRAC is to provide packets of information about the Baton Rouge Area to anyone considering a move here or who recently moved here. I sometimes make as many as a hundred at a time for organizations who interview a lot of out-of-state candidates, like the hospitals or universities. In order to make those packets, our awesome intern and I sit on the floor and make an assembly line putting all the information and goodies in the packets.
TECHNOLOGY
Mac or PC? Mac
What’s your preferred mode of communication: text or phone call? Call. I’m a talker.
How low will you allow your remaining battery life to get (in %) before you have an anxiety attack? I secretly enjoy it a little when my battery life is low. It’s like the universe giving you an excuse to check out for a bit.
How many unread messages are in your inbox right now? Yikes. Seventy, but that’s high for me. I try to leave every day with no unread messages and I like to completely clean out my inbox every Friday. The past few weeks have been a bit rough and I’ve let it slide.
What app gets you through the day? I’m not tied to any apps, but I do love and look forward to The Skimm email every morning.
Are you quick to adapt to new tech, or did you hang on to that flip phone way after it became obsolete? I prefer to think of it as letting others work out the kinks.
PERSONALITY
How many times do you hit the snooze button? Two to four, unless one of my kids wakes me up. I can’t seem to find the snooze button on those little chicks.
Breakfast at home? Breakfast on the go? Breakfast at your desk? No breakfast at all? Breakfast every day. No exceptions. I have been pregnant off and on for the better part of the past six years and I get hungry by 9:00 if I don’t have a full breakfast. I try to be good and eat at home, but more days than I care to admit I swing by Magpie on my way to the office. I am a Magpie junkie! James, the owner, jokes that I am on his unofficial board of directors.
Is the glass half empty or half full? What’s in the glass? Half full of a really well-made Maker’s Mark Old Fashioned.
What’s your motto? I am only as “together” in any part of my life as I have to be for it to function.
When did you realize you had grown up? Very few people have ever accused me of being grown up.
Which historical figure do you most identify with? Benjamin Franklin. I love that he wore so many hats and never let himself get boxed in to being one thing professionally.
Which living person do you most admire? I would have to say my parents and in-laws. All four of them were working parents for the better part of their adult lives and managed to work in fields they enjoyed, stay married, and raise great kids. I’m now in the throes of realizing how difficult it is to do all three of those things simultaneously.
What is your greatest extravagance? Babysitters. We do a lot of activities as a family, which is important to us, but we also love spending adult time with our friends and each other. We’re not the kind of people who won’t attend a function if our kids can’t attend and we don’t like to have to split up so one can go and one has to stay home.
What trend do you really wish would come back? I’ll tell you which trend I wish would go back out–extremely high wasted shorts and pants. It was terrible the first time around and it’s just as terrible now.
What is your favorite journey? Parenthood. We have a very laissez faire parenting style, which works for us and our kids, but has led to adventures at every turn. We very often bathe our kids in the kiddie pool in the backyard during the summer. The regulars at Zippy’s know our kids by name and age. We brought our five-year-old to her first day of kindergarten on the wrong day. #parentfail Lots of stories. We have dubbed our journey, “The never ending quest to be parents of the year.”
On what occasion do you lie? Any occasion where the lie makes a better story–white lie, of course.
What is your greatest regret? I wish that I had discovered earlier in life what is worth stressing about and what isn’t. I am much less stressed out now that I have two jobs and three kids than I was in high school and college when all I had to worry about was a bit of studying and a part-time job.
When and where were you happiest? I try to be happy in whatever stage of life I am. Every phase brings unique challenges and opportunities and they’re all worth enjoying.
Which talent or superpower would you most like to have and why? I would give anything to be able to sing. My best friend since kindergarten says that I am such a ham I would be insufferable if I could also sing, so God removed that talent from me in order for me to have friends.
If you could change one thing about yourself, what would it be? I wish I was better at saying “no.” Last year I had a conversation with a friend about how saying “no” to external requests was actually a form of saying “yes” to yourself. That has helped me tremendously, but I still have a long way to go.
What’s your most treasured possession? I would have to say my house, although our bank might argue my claim of “possessing” it. The purchase process was a very lengthy one that resulted in a close friendship with the family we purchased it from. The house was very special to them and we’re so thankful they allowed this special place to pass into our lives. Throughout the renovation we have sent pictures and invited them over to see the progress. We had so many friends and family members help with everything from painting, to backsplash tiling, to yard work that I could never add up the hours of love that went into the process. Also, my dad and I spent a lot of time on projects like creating the light fixture for our dining room out of an old tractor fender of my grandfather’s. Every inch of the house has a story and I’m excited for it to be the place we raise our family.
If you could live anywhere on this planet and take everything that you love with you, where would you choose to live and why? I would live on the land that my grandparents own. It’s outside of Opelousas just where it starts getting hilly in Central Louisiana. There are wild blackberries in the summer and pecans in the fall and it’s beautiful year-round. There is a small crazy part of me that wants to start a village and make all of my friends and family move into little cabins out there together.
What do you most value in your friends? Humor, drive, and creativity.
What do you miss most about the ’90s? The absence of technology. I am a low-tech person. I might be the only professional in Baton Rouge who still carries around a paper calendar planner.
If you had to be a teacher of something, what would you teach? One of the topics I cover in my Screaming Peacock workshops is how to enjoy each day at least a little. You see so many people walking around unhappy and stressed all the time and it’s over the most insignificant problems. What a waste of a day!
What is your theme song? The song that I would love to have playing as my theme song when I enter buildings is “Good Day” by Nappy Roots.
Who would play you in a movie? It would have to be someone likeable with a good sense of humor, not too serious, but who can pull it together when she has to. Maybe Kristen Wiig or Jennifer Garner.
If you could go back in time 20 years, what advice would you give yourself? Don’t let the little things stress you out! Also, a lot of those really cool people in high school peak during those years so don’t be too jealous of their lives.
What useless piece of information will you never forget? “Le monstre est horrible,” which means “The monster is horrible” in French. It’s one of the only phrases I can recall perfectly at any moment from my many, many years of French in elementary school.
What makes you laugh every time you think about it? A few weeks ago my husband Paul noticed that a friend of ours had not locked his car when dropping off his son at daycare, so he hid in his back seat. As soon as our friend got back in the car to leave, Paul jumped out and scared the daylights out of him. The funniest part of the story for me is the thought of these two professionally-dressed men having this interaction in front of all the other parents at 8:00 a.m. in the daycare parking lot. Also, Paul can’t help but laugh every time he tells someone the story and it makes me laugh to watch him try to tell it without laughing.
LOOKING AHEAD
Three things on your bucket list: I make a new bucket list every year. I literally write down things I want to do the following year on a bucket and keep it on my desk. My Master Minds group does this as our end of the year activity every December. A few things for my 2015 list are 1) Have a healthy delivery of my fourth child 2) Plan another successful Around the Table, which is a community dinner event we started last year through BRAC’s talent program 3) Book at least two speaking engagements at national conferences through Screaming Peacock.
If you have children, what concerns you most about the future they will inherit? My oldest is just five so I’m still blissfully in the baby/toddler/elementary stage. The prevalence of web-based technology in children’s lives these days terrifies me. The online bullying and pressure to have accounts on all the latest platforms with people of all ages and backgrounds is something I can’t begin to comprehend yet.
What would be your advice for future Forty Under 40 honorees? This is something I need to be reminded of more often myself. There are so many worthy causes to get involved with and ideas to act on, but you don’t have to do them all at once. I have been asked to sit on a couple of boards lately for groups that I would love to be more involved with, but I don’t have the time to be a high-quality member right now. A friend helped me see that just because I can’t commit to it right now doesn’t mean I won’t be able to in the future. I think every year you have to determine what is most important and what requires your time and energy that year and commit to those things. Spreading yourself too thin prevents you from giving your best to the endeavors that really matter.
Do you plan to be in the Capital Region five years from now? Yes! W purchased an eighty-year-old house in the Hundred Oaks area last year and put our blood, sweat, and tears (and money!) into renovating it. We will be in that house for the long haul.
Why have you chosen to make your home in the Capital Region? We love that there’s so much to do, but it still has a community feel. Also, it’s perfectly set between my parents in the Lafayette area and my husband’s parents on the Northshore.
Have you peaked, or do you think you’ll still have it when we launch our hypothetical “Forty Over 40” awards years from now? Ha! My good friend and fellow honoree Nick Speyrer and I were laughing about this question. I certainly hope not! I was going to answer, “Totally! After this I’m just going to sit home barefooted with my krewe of kids and eat leftover pizza.” Honestly, though, I can’t sit still so that will never work. I hope I continue to find ways to contribute professionally and philanthropically in our community and somehow figure out the best balance between family and work.
