S5:E185🎙️ Live with Laura Byrd

S5:E185🎙️ Live with Laura Byrd

The Right Talent, Right Now: Building Winning Teams at the Speed of Business 🚀

Mark your calendars!

The Leadership & Success Podcast with Coach BZ Season 5:Episode 185 goes LIVE with my friend Laura Byrd, Principal-Owner of Elite Sales Search!

📅 Date: Friday, September 4, 2026 ⏰ Time: 9 AM PT (San Francisco, CA) | 11 AM CT (Austin, TX) | 12 PM ET (Washington, D.C.) 📍 LIVE on LinkedIn → [RSVP & Join the Discussion]

🌟 Meet My Guest: Laura Byrd

What if one of the greatest barriers standing between your organization and its next stage of growth isn't your strategy, technology, or capital—but having the right people to execute the mission?

Laura Byrd has spent more than 25 years finding those people.

Laura is the Principal-Owner of Elite Sales Search, a woman-owned placement and HR consulting firm specializing in finding best-in-class talent from entry level through the C-suite across cybersecurity, software, cloud, SaaS, AI, sales, engineering, operations, finance, and other critical disciplines.

Her philosophy is powerful:

“Acquiring the right talent is the most important driver for growth. Do it right the first time.”

Before becoming an entrepreneur, Laura built an extraordinary career recruiting and developing talent across companies including BMC Software, EMC, Intel Security/McAfee, Blue Coat Systems, and Symantec. Her experience includes executive recruiting, enterprise sales organizations, Sales Engineers, Professional Services, Federal teams, and highly cleared talent. 

And Laura and I discovered an interesting connection: we both spent part of our careers inside the EMC ecosystem. She worked for EMC, while I later worked for Pivotal Software, part of the EMC Federation.

Tomorrow, we are going to compare notes! 😊

🎯 What You Will Learn…

✨ Why talent is a business strategy. What separates an A-player from someone who merely interviews well?

✨ How to recognize the “right talent.” After 25+ years evaluating candidates and watching careers unfold, what has Laura learned about character, potential, performance, and leadership?

✨ How Laura finds hard-to-reach talent FAST. We'll unpack the relationships, processes, industry knowledge, and network that allow Elite Sales Search to move at the speed of business.

✨ A masterclass for OEMs and Federal contractors. Laura specifically wants to share how she supports these organizations from a placement-services perspective—including reaching specialized consultants, engineers, sales professionals, and other difficult-to-find talent quickly. 

✨ Lessons from EMC, McAfee, Blue Coat & Symantec. What did some of technology's legendary high-performance organizations teach Laura about recruiting, sales, culture, and winning teams?

✨ The entrepreneur's journey. What happens when someone who spent decades building teams for major corporations decides to bet on herself and build her own company?

✨ AI and the future of talent. As AI transforms how organizations work, which capabilities become less important—and which uniquely human qualities become even MORE valuable?

✨ What leaders get wrong about hiring. Laura has spent a career watching leaders make talent decisions. What does she wish every CEO, CRO, CHRO, hiring manager, and candidate understood?

💬 Join the Conversation!

🗺️ Where are you tuning in from? Drop your city, region, or country in the comments!

🙏🏽 What is one thing you are grateful for today?

💬 Got a leadership, recruiting, career, cybersecurity talent, Federal contracting, AI, or building-winning-teams question for Laura? Post it below—we will answer as many as we can LIVE!

⸻

👇 Your Turn:

➡️ What are your three takeaways from this episode?

➡️ What's one leadership insight you're applying this week?

➡️ Tag a CEO, CRO, CHRO, hiring manager, entrepreneur, Federal contractor, technology leader, colleague, or teammate who could benefit from this conversation. ❤️🙏🏾

#LeadershipAndSuccess #CoachBZ #LauraByrd