115: Alisa Cohn | Growing Personally as a Leader

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Chat, I kept going back to my vision board. As in, this difficult moment is not why I'm doing this. It's the promise of this vision board. That's why I'm doing it. So I use it to inspire myself. And I kept putting one foot in front of the other. And when you asked me how it was, it was terrifying and, like, very confronting. But also I made progress and got traction very quickly. And it did feel like me. This is what I'm meant to do. And so I had to work through the fact that it wasn't secure at first and the fact that I was scared and the fact that I had to push myself to do things I didn't really want to do. And I think that all made me stronger. That definitely all made me stronger. And then ultimately, becoming successful is very rewarding after that kind of beginning.

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Alyssa Cohn and you're listening to Business Minds Coffee Chat with Jay Shear.

Jay.

Jay Shear. Jay Shear.

Jay Shear. Jay Shear Business Consultant Jay Shear. Jay Shear Business Consulting. Hey everybody, I'm Jay Shear with Jay Shear Business Consulting. We build solid foundations for service based businesses to grow and scale and achieve the results and success they deserve. And you've joined Business Minds Coffee Chat. Seth Godin said, the only thing worse than starting something and failing is is not starting something. Well, on today's episode we talk about starting something, startups, becoming a leader, failure, and much more. Our guest is an executive coach, an angel investor, advisor, author, speaker, podcast host, and a recovering cpa. She's been named the number one startup coach in the world and the number one global guru for startups. Her list of clients includes Etsy, Microsoft, Foursquare, Venmo, Google and many others. Her articles have appeared in Harvard Business Review, Inc.com and Forbes.com among other publications. And on top of all of this, she's also a Broadway investor, has done stand up comedy, released a rap video, and knows a thing or two about swinging a kettlebell. Please welcome Alyssa Cohn. Alyssa, it is so great to see you. Thank you for being here today.

Jay. What a lovely, lovely introduction. And thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to do all those things to talk about all those things, especially kettlebells today.

Love it. Outstanding. Well, I'm really looking forward to this conversation, so let's dive right in. I'd love it if you would share with us first what words you would use to describe yourself.

Oh well, for better and for worse, I guess I would use the words direct. I would use the words down to earth. And also funny. I like to laugh. I like to be accessible. I like to keep it light. And I think that it's important to build relationships to have kind of a sense of humor.

Wonderful. Thank you for sharing that. So let's wind back the hands of time a bit. You know, I always think it's important to get to know someone, to understand their backstory, to understand the experiences that they had in their youth and those certain things that shaped who you are today. So let's, let's go ahead and turn the clock back on you. Can you share with us a bit about your, your backstory and let's talk about some of those early experiences that you had that shaped the person who you are today.

Yeah. You know, I grew up in a small town, and it was a town, halliston, Mass. With 16,000 people in it. And when my father used to talk about me, my father would say, Alyssa knew she wanted her own apartment at 4 years old. So I guess I was always independent in some way. I also know that I was always a seeker. I was always curious and interested in finding out why is that and how does the world work, and I don't understand consciousness and things like that. I began to be the person that everybody would turn to for advice. Like when I was a kid in sixth grade, we were doing this play of some sort and everybody kept coming to me to ask me, can I be this part? Can I be that part? And I never really understood why they were asking me. So I guess I would just say that I had maybe an over developed sense of responsibility and accountability at an early age, as well as being somebody who wanted to help people get what they wanted and get where they were going. So I think all those experiences were true of me at a young age. And last thing I would say is that When I was 14, I was on a bus with my friend Kim Berman, and we were talking about, what would you do if money were no. What would you do when you grew up if money were no object? And we both answered that question. And what I said was I would have intense conversations. So when I became a coach, it became a context for me to have intense conversations over and over and over again, because most people don't want to have intense conversations all day long. And we're together for like an hour and they have an intense conversation and that's fine, they move on, but I get to have an intense conversation with the next person. So I think all of those are the seeds of my profession, you know, start at a young age.

Wonderful. By the way, what did your. What was your friend's response to that question?

You know, that's. I think about that and I don't really remember. I'm not sure if she had a good response. And oh, by the way, her Superpower turned out to be really raising her family. And that was not really on her mind at age 13. But now, in hindsight, it's clear that she was really somebody who was very devoted to raising her family and raising her kids. P.S. i'm the one who introduced Kim to her husband, Farzad. So you're welcome, Kim and Farzad, and you're welcome. With three children who would not exist without me.

Look at you. The matchmaker.

That's right.

I love it. So what did your parents do as you were growing up? What was their career? What were they involved in?

My parents, my father was a quality assurance manager or something at. He was a tech guy, basically, and he specifically did qa. My mother left her job with the Social Security Administration to raise us and then took on a bunch of jobs and then ultimately went back to the Social Security office. And just to say that when I entered the workforce, you know, sort of after, right. As I was graduating from college, my mother said to me, you are going to love working. You're going to love it. And my mother and I were very similar. And I could see that she loved working. She loved the independence, right. So she could make her own money. She loved being good at something. She loved public speaking, which she got to kind of go out and do speeches about Social Security and. And how it could work for you. So, like, on her small stage, she was like a very big public speaker. And. And so I think that my parents really instilled in me a sense of enjoying what you did, in a sense. And also my parents did a lot of, I guess you might call. I sort of at the time thought it was quirky volunteer work. They were both volunteers of the Museum of Science and other organizations. And also, last thing I want to say to my parents is that they were among the founding families of the temple. We were very small Jewish community in Holliston, and my parents were among the founding families to build our own synagogue and have our own, you know, home for the Jewish people in Holliston. And, you know, that was like a real. I look back on that with a lot of pride that they took a real leadership role and a proactive role in seeing that something could. We could have something, even though there was nothing there now.

Wow, remarkable. It truly is. So let's staying on that, on that thought for a moment around our youth and some of those lessons that we learned. What was something that you believed about yourself early on that you discovered wasn't true?

This may not be from childhood, but one way or the other, I guess I would say I assumed that I, like everybody in my family, everybody I knew, would have just a regular, normal job. And as I became a coach and then kind of moved on in my career, because I had that kind of very normal, mainstream experience of myself, I never thought that I would be a public figure. I never thought that I would be able to write a book. And so those are all things I had to go through my own personal transformation to kind of debunk inside of myself in order to have the career I wanted to have.

Interesting. So let's continue to unpack that a bit, because as we start to talk about your latest book, the first part of that book, and I don't want to completely go there yet, but the first part of it is really the work on you. And one of the things that I always say is that if you want to grow a business, if you want to grow a thriving business, you have to grow you first. So along those lines, would you say that the work on you, Alyssa, continues today?

Yeah, the work. The work is never ending. The work is always. And as you know, my. My rap video is called the Work is in you, because the work is in you. That's why. And that is what self development is. That is exactly what self development is. It never ends. And if you're not learning and you're not growing, then you're dying. So I totally. But that's my religion is personal development, and has been probably since I was a kid, but certainly my entire adult life. And it's not like, oh, I'm bad, need to get fixed. It's more like there's more to aspire to. And isn't it interesting and fun to enjoy the process of learning and growing and aspiring to more?

Love that. So let's talk about that process then for you. So when you.

If.

If we never thought that we would write a book or that we would be a coach or that we would have this particular client, what is the process for you in order to achieve something new or grow into. Grow a new skill set or go after. Like, let's take the book as an example. So you never imagined writing a book. So what was the process like then, to be able to change that storyline that you were telling yourself?

Yeah, so it comes to mind, I just recorded a podcast episode of my podcast From Startup to Grown up, and I talked to Roger Thomas, the founder of sprinklr, and he said everything is created two times, first in your mind and then in the world. And I love that quote And I resonate with that because I could never imagine seeing myself writing a book. So like my creation in my own mind was you'll never be able to do that. So I had to be able to transform that as in, you know, for me it was a lot of inner work, like as in what is in your way. And my friend Michael Bunge Senior was kind enough to do this immunity to change workshop with me. This very. It's like sort of small piece of work. And he helped me identify the constraining factors. Basically when we're not changing to do something we want to do, it's because we have one foot on the accelerator. That means we want to do that, but we have one foot on the brake. So what's on the brake? And I identified for myself by really going deep an understanding of my identity and what it would mean for me. And also my concerns, like, as in people who write books are like this and I don't want to be like that. They all talk with their books all the time and they're always like kind of quoting themselves. And I thought that was annoying. So that's an example of what was in my way about not wanting to be that person, but also a sense of I'm a little girl from a small town, who am I to kind of write a book, who am I to be a public figure? And I had to sort of really come to terms with that. And it was quite painful, I'll be honest with you. I can sort of joke about it now, but it was really painful to both want something so much and not be able to do it, but also to look in a clear eyed way about what I was holding on to that was in my way. So then I think the process is in some ways just untangling, surfacing those things that are really in my mind and in my, in my body, right in myself and putting them all on the table. That's kind of, I think, like the deck of cards, like all on the table and then deciding who do you really want to be? Like that sort of idea of envisioning in your head first if all that stuff was on the table and not embedded inside of you. So it sounds a little esoteric, but I think it's a lot of thinking and than acting your way into that new identity that you want to take on.

Yeah, I think that's really a remarkable experience and journey that you, that you went on. And what always amazes me, and that's one of the premises of this show, is talking about the human Experience. Right. It's a business show. But, you know, we all go through those. Those experiences of whether it's self doubt, the stories that we tell ourselves, and learning how to reframe, learning how to work past the limiting beliefs that. That we carry with us. And often it's not even our own beliefs. Right. It's beliefs that were passed on to us. It's biases that we carry, but how we're able to work past that to achieve the level of success that we want in our own lives. So I appreciate you sharing that and I appreciate you sharing that you have done deep work yourself and you continue to. Because we're always a work in progress, right?

Yeah, for sure. I think that for me, it would be, like, hypocritical if I weren't willing to do the deep work. And also, I think what makes me a great coach is that I've experienced all the obstacles that other people experience. I'm not like, oh, some special, you know, person born, like whole cloth. I've, like, done the work myself and walked the path myself. I was just an event. Just when we were going to events in September, and I was telling the story about my development and my obstacles, and someone said, oh, wow, you know, you're a coach. So, like, I would have thought that you would have been able to figure, figure that out for yourself. And I'm like, no, that doesn't work that way. I'm a human being. And I became a coach because I'm interested in, obsessed with, passionate about. That's my life's work, really, is to untangle my own obstacles and in doing so, find ways to help other people untangle their own obstacles.

Beautifully said. Truly. So have you. Do you have coaches yourself for different areas of your life and business?

Definitely. So one mainstay coach in my life is my fitness coach who coaches me in kettlebells. And actually, I've learned a lot from him about coaching and actually the power of positive feedback, that has really been clear to me through him because he's very positive. And so he's not like, pushing me like a taskmaster. He's encouraging me by showing me what's working. I have another coach that helps me with my business, sort of a peer coach. We think about business together. And then I have another peer coach. We coach each other about our own personal growth. So, you know, and I also have a lot of mentors. I mean, I'm interested in community, and I think about the world as like, everyone's on my team and I'm on everyone else's team. And that's like a good way to live your life.

I love that. And for all of you that are watching and listening right now, you know, I want to make sure that this point is not lost on anyone. That no matter what our position is in life, no matter how far we've come, no matter how much further we have to go, coaching is relevant in any place in business and life. You know, here with, with a very successful coach, executive coach, Alyssa has coaches. And so we, we talk about that and the importance of surrounding yourself with others who have been there, who've done that, who can help push you, who can help help drive you forward. And so keep that in mind and never get to a place where you think you've arrived and that you can't grow anymore, because we can, we can always grow. We can always learn more from others. So let's talk then about when you decided to get into coaching officially as a career. What was the, what was the impetus behind that decision? And when you finally said, this is where I'm going to be investing my time, what did that feel like for you?

Well, a little bit in fits and starts. So I met, I went to a conference and I met a coach. I met Cheryl Richardson. She's a speaker and a coach. And she spoke to the volunteers and I was like, who is that? I want to do that? And I followed her around the conference and I saw her stand in a room of 500 people and she gave a talk and then she said, okay, who wants to get live coached right now? And I thought, oh my God, what is going to happen now? And someone stood up. She did live coaching with this person. And I thought, oh my God, I could never do that. But I also thought I could do that. Like, I saw that in me somehow. So I followed her around and I said, what should I do? Should take coach training? I said, ok, I'll take coach training. But in the meantime, I was still working at a big four accounting firm, professional services firm. And so I was trying to figure out what am I really going to do? And I felt too young to be actually an executive coach. So I ended up going. I wanted to make. That was in the head, my, in the music, in my head was to make a difference if the work of my hands mattered. And I didn't feel like a PwC. It was just too big for me. And I just could not see how the work of my hand matters, of my hands mattered. So I went off to the startup world and I was The CFO of one startup and the head of the strategy of another startup. And that made me think, like, I could make a difference here because it's so small. I took my coach training. I hired my own coach. I coached all my friends for free. And then the startup world imploded, you know, of the 2000s. And I thought, okay, I'm going to become a coach now. But easy to say, right? So on Friday, decided to become a coach, and on Monday, I became a coach. And it was, like, really difficult, actually. It was very scary. I didn't know exactly what to do. Again, I had hired my own coach. So she helped me figure out what to do. And I began to coach people who I didn't know for free, and I began to get referrals from them, and I began to charge. I did all these things that I had to do to build my business. But one thing, Jay, that I did at very first is that I built a vision board, which is such a hokey thing to do, but I did it, and it was like a vision board of my ideal life. And even when I did those difficult things, like make cold calls or, like, you know, be rejected or one time someone said, well, what is a coach? And I was so ineffective in answering his question and so garbled that he said at the end, oh, that was compelling. In a very sarcastic way. That actually happened. I know. So I had a lot of, like, issues. I mean, it was, like, not all straight up and to the right. Right. So I kind of kept thinking, I kept going back to my vision board, as in, this difficult moment is not why I'm doing this. It's the promise of this vision board. That's why I'm doing it. So I use it to inspire myself. And I kept putting one foot in front of the other. And when you asked me how it was, it was terrifying and, like, very confronting. But also, I made progress and got traction very quickly. And it did feel like me, this is what I'm meant to do. And so I had to work through the fact that it wasn't secure at first and the fact that I was scared and the fact that I had to push myself to do things I didn't really want to do. And I think that all made me stronger. Definitely all made me stronger. And then ultimately, becoming successful is very rewarding after that kind of beginning.

Interesting. Do you still have that vision board?

I do. I have that in my home in New York. It's not even hanging up because I don't quite know where to Put it, but it's still meaningful to me.

What on that vision board have you not accomplished yet, but know that you will and are on a path to do so?

That vision board is 20 years old and I've accomplished much more than that was on that vision board, you know, so in fact, I could have if, you know, if I had advice to that person. Right. I would know. I would want to tell that person who created that vision board, number one, you're going to be successful, so calm down. And number two, think bigger. Think much bigger. And I didn't know to do that. The reason the vision board is still inspiring to me today is because it's a marker of who that hopeful person was and it's not an activity that I would ever do. It's like it's kind of touchy feely for me and I don't believe in that. Let's just go. But the fact that I took the time myself, no one gave me the assignment, that I took the time and energy to find magazines and cut out the stuff and you know, like put it on, on the board itself must have meant it was pretty important to me and significant to me. And when I look at it, I see the person I think the kid who did that vision board.

Yeah. It's interesting to have something that we can look back on to evaluate the progress that we've made and how we've changed as individuals.

Definitely.

Do you, as part of your coaching today, do you encourage clients to create vision boards or something similar, let's say, to be able to define what their vision looks like?

Yes. So two examples of that. This is what happened when I was still living in Boston. So, you know, kind of at least 15 years ago I was working with a client at a, you know, an executive at a very mainstream public tech company. And I don't know even how we got there, but at some point I found myself prescribing the vision board to him and he was the most straight laced Boston guy in the world. And to my surprise, he accepted the assignment of the vision board. So he did the vision board, he got magazines and got the vision board and cut out. It's not really a male activity cutting out pictures in a magazine. And he brought it in a few weeks later and showed it to me and then told me how he, as he said, he took his wife through it, he took his kids through it. It was a really nourishing activity. And you know that no one's telling him on a regular basis to make vision boards. So for him, he found it a very nourishing activity. And it was clarifying, right? It was clarifying for him, but kind of where he wanted to go in his mind's eye. So that's one example. The second example is that I regularly deal with founders who are undergoing like understandable self doubt because it's really hard to build a startup. It's really hard. And they're feeling like imposter syndrome and they're managing people who are older than them and they can't raise Money or the VCs are being intimidating or whatever, or a lot of setbacks happen. And what I have them do is do a highlight reel. So it's not exactly a vision board, but it's a reminder of who are you when you're at your best. And I ask them to think about their best moments and when they're their most confident and when they're most successful and write them down and then they have like five or six anecdotes right there to help remind them of their greatness, their brilliant capacity, even in moments where they're not feeling that way.

Wonderful. I mean also what a great reminder and something that you can always go back to. So to your point, when you're experiencing that self doubt or I can't do this or I'm not good enough to do this, I can always go back to that and see that I have accomplished. Right. I can do this, I've shown myself. I love that. What a great example to work from. So let's jump into your new book. From Startup to Grown Up. That book, and I am just finishing it right now, I actually am listening to it on audible and I'm going to buy the hard copy version as well because I really like to have both. But like you working out with kettlebells, I listen to it when I'm running, when I'm in the gym. It's just a great time for me to be able to, to, to process information and, and absorb it. So that book is really, it's a framework for entrepreneurs that are on their journey from founder to CEO and it's broken down into three primary parts. Managing you, me. Right, Managing me, managing them and then managing the company. So before we dig into these areas, I really want to find out from you because you had to deal with overcoming that self limiting belief that I can't write a book.

But you did.

When did you start to write the book and walk us through a little bit of the process of writing. Did you did it once you started writing? Did it all just kind of come together for you were there. The ups and downs that you deal with, just kind of walk us through and how that felt.

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Well, I had a number of fits and starts with the book and I had met a publisher along the way and we talked about what the book would be about. First of all, I would even say before this I had, I worked with somebody on a proposal and at the end of that proposal I was like, this book is so boring. I don't want to write this book. This sucks. And so then I put it away, you know, as it did, and so fits and starts, right? And then I brought it back up and I met than an editor at a publishing house. So not an agent, but actually an editor herself at the publishing house. And she encouraged me to write a table of contents, which I did. And then we had a conversation back and forth and then again I kind of left it. But When I came back to her, I sort of kept thinking about thinking about it and I kept thinking about what is, you know, to your point about framework, what is the framework that I want to divide it into? And I thought managing you, managing them and managing the business was sort of maybe obvious and kind of vanilla. And I would bounce it off of people and they'd say, oh, that's great. Oh, really? That's good. Really. Okay, so then like, that was helpful. And by the time I was ready to show it to her and others again, in my mind's eye, I thought, I'm going to talk to a number of publishers about this book, you know, agents and publishers and whoever, and if nobody wants it, I'm gonna write it myself. Like, I was ready. In my mind's eye, I was going to self publish it. That's what I'm gonna do. So, you know, luckily for, you know, I won't say luckily, but like, happily, I guess. I got the contract with Kogan Page, my publisher. They're an international publisher. So I was really excited to have international reach and that we finally signed that in September of, of 2020. So then the deadline was April 1st. And I was like, what? What are you talking about? I can't do that. But I thought, well, yes, I can, I can. Because sometimes extra time doesn't actually help you, right? Sometimes deadlines are so powerful and you can compress what you need to do in that period. So I began by talking to a recorder. I recorded a bunch of stories and I recorded them and I recorded them and recorded them and I would send them to people and they would ask me other questions. And so I had like a set of, of stories as a starting point and I began to write them out. And then in the middle of, I was probably on chapter five and I already had my title From Startup to Grown up. And I was reading through my book what I had already written, and I thought, oh, this book is terrible. It's so disappointing. It's so disappointing. My book is such a great title. From Startup to Growing Up. What a great title. It deserves a better book. And I was so upset. Yeah. So I, I thought, well, hang on, it's only February and I have till April, so I don't have to just. I've sort of realized this is not a book you're reading, this is a book you're writing. So I gave it to a very good friend and I said, he's an editor. And I said, what's wrong with my book? And he was so Kind to read my first chapter. And he was so kind to say, oh, you have such great ideas, but you don't have the right structure. And then he was so kind to sit down to me, sat down with me and work on the structure. And I rewrote chapter one. It took me a long time, but I rewrote it. And I thought, oh, okay. And from there on out, I was just go. I was like, rewrote chapter two, rewrote chapter three. And they kept getting easier because I had my structure already all set, and I gained confidence. And also, there's a point of, like, I'm going to be able to hit my deadline. I can't believe it. Me, I'm going to write a book. It's going to happen. So that was also very motivating.

Wow. What. What an amazing process. And, you know, I take. I'm listening to you. And that can be applied to so many different areas, right? The. The. The pushing through, the creating a deadline, compressing that deadline. Right. As opposed to giving ourselves so much time working with someone, whether a coach, an editor. Right. Someone who can provide us some tools that can really help us, that we can pull from when we need them, and just doing the work and then realizing that confidence, competence loop and how we continue to grow in our confidence level as we become more competent in what we're doing. I think it's a great, great analogy for so many other things that we deal with in life. And thank goodness you continued to push through, so you were able to bring that book to life for the rest of us to learn from and experience. So let's talk then about the first part of this around managing you. And I love that you started there, and it's such a great book. And for all of you that are watching and listening right now, I mentioned just a couple of minutes ago that I've been listening to it on Audible, but I'm also going to buy the hard copy version of it if I would encourage everyone to do exactly the same thing. Right, Buy both. Because at least the Audible version, you get to hear Alyssa reading the book, telling the stories, and you've got such a warm. As everyone can tell through this conversation, you've got such a warm and great personality that comes through in the book, and it just makes it. It pulls you right in. So let's talk about the managing you piece of it. Why managing you? Why is this so important?

First of all, thank you for saying that. That's very nice of you. Managing you is so important for all the Reasons we were just talking about, right? In the sense that you have to believe you can do it, you have to handle yourself. And there's a lot of elements of managing you. So first of all, it has to do with you as a leader, you as a human being. The first person you lead every day is the one who wakes up in your pajamas. And so you have to deal with that person, right? And that means that whatever your job is, if you're a parent, you've got to act like a parent, right? Not like, oh, I don't feel like it. Well, you don't have a choice, right? If you are a leader in a, in a company, you can't be like, oh, I don't feel like being a leader today. No, you've got to get yourself into the right state of mind to realize I need to be this, this person, this sort of archetype and this person in my life today, whether it's professional life or personal life. The other thing is that it's really important to have self awareness, to know your natural swings, what drives you crazy, what lights you up, what your blind spots are, what your impulses are. All those things are super important, just to be aware of yourself so that you know when you're susceptible to being grumpy or irritable, you know when you're susceptible to making decision mistakes because you were sort of too taken with an idea or too quick to jump into something. And then the other part about managing yourself has to do with managing your own psychology. In the startup world, but also in life, there are lots of ups and downs. And so you've got to be able to deal with the ups and downs with resilience, with optimism, with ability to find the action to take and next steps to take and not to get mired into the critics in your head and the external circumstances which are conspiring against you. So all of that is managing yourself.

So let's talk just very briefly then about blind spots. I want to take just one segment of this. And for someone who just. They're not aware, right. They don't have, they haven't cultivated that self awareness. What are some tactics that someone can employ to better understand where their blind spots are and how they can more effectively receive or ask for feedback, right?

So a good way to get your blind spots is to get feedback from other people. And you can do that by hiring a coach or even just doing an anonymous survey tool and ask people around you what are your strongest strengths? Because sometimes blind spots are also this good stuff. Like, oh, I didn't realize I was so good at that. People saw that in me. And then also, what are my weaknesses? Development opportunities, obstacles and blind spots. And people, if you give them the permission to tell you, will tell you what you're not seeing. I'll speak for myself. Long ago, I took this training program in the Hogan assessment, and it's a very powerful tool. And you just take the Hogan assessment. So I took the Hogan assessment and I had this person, a very young woman in Oklahoma, she debriefed me, and she was sort of talking like this, and she was very young and she had her breathy voice. And she said. She said, well, it says here that you're kind of overly. You're easily irritated. And I'm like, I'm not easily irritated. That's not true. What a stupid assessment, right? That's just not true. So for two weeks I walked around the world, and every time I got irritated at, like, standing in line or whatever, I thought, huh, I wonder if this is what she meant by easily irritated. And so it's like, you've got to take these little glimmers of things, especially that you disagree with violently. And what I tell my clients all the time is, try them on just like a raincoat, just try them on and see if they might be true. You can always give them back. But try them on. When people are willing to give you a little glimmer of input that you don't recognize, then. The other thing I would say is that journaling is very helpful because when you journal over and over again, you may see patterns over and over again of a certain kind of person who bugs you, a certain kind of circumstance, or even just like a time. Like, I know that one of my clients, in doing bullet journals throughout the day, he realized he was always irritated around 3 o'. Clock. Huh, Interesting. What do you have for lunch? Oh, you skip lunch. Oh, interesting. How about a snack? You think a snack might help? We're just like a bunch of chemicals. And so it was a blind spot for him that people were actually nervous to approach him later in the afternoon, which is just not a very good look as a leader. And so he, as he became, came to terms with that and sort of saw what he was going on inside of him. He could easily fix it, but not until he could see it.

Amazing. I think one of the most important aspects of that, once we've identified what those blind spots are, is being able to receive the feedback and understanding that, as you said, it's an opportunity to Grow. It's an opportunity to become better. I know throughout my own corporate career and years in management and leadership that there were definitely times that I let my ego get in the way, where if I received feedback, it, I didn't take it the way that I could have, should have, and it would have enabled me to learn and to improve in that area. So I can't change the past. Right. But I can learn from that and use that as inspiration to get better moving forward, right?

Totally.

Yeah. So, so then let's talk about managing them. So we've gone from managing us to managing them. So what are some of the key lessons that we should be paying attention to in the managing them section?

Well, managing them is a whole basket of things and it really has to do with no matter what, you have to grow as a leader. Right. So everybody starts off well. I'll say normal growth as a leader is that you're an individual contributor and you take joy in your own success and you've got to shift that to take joy in other people's success. Now founders have more difficult journey in some ways because the entry level position of a founder is leader. Right? Like you don't get the chance to get groomed inside of IBM for 20 years if you become a founder after only one or two job experiences. So you've got to grow rapidly as a leader. And that means learning the tools of feedback, of delegation, of how to manage people. And what I say at the very beginning of the book is leadership is an unnatural act. Because the truth is that you don't grow up knowing how to give other adults feedback. It's weird. You don't give your friends feedback. That's kind of weird. Also, most of us grew up with this experience of being uncomfortable with conflict or being uncomfortable with real talk. We don't usually have that in the home. If, by the way, if you're the rare person who has that in the home, trust me, nobody else in your workplace got that in the home. Okay? So people shy away from direct conversations. They shy away from so called confrontation and conflict. And the other thing I would say is that people, human beings and adults don't naturally give praise to their people. And yet praise and progress are among the most motivating things you could do for your employees. By the way, they're free just in case, in case you're unclear. So we're missing this magical management tool of praise and showing people progress because people kind of feel uncomfortable about, how do you say, like I love you in the workplace, right? That's how, that's how people kind of relate to praise. So. Or they don't think about it or they themselves grew up in a family which was short on praise. So for all those reasons, you have to unlearn some things that you learned and you have to really quickly, rapidly learn the tools of just how to manage other people and how to have the sort of sensing the way to sense how other people are feeling and adapt your style to them as opposed to the way you naturally are. So back to self awareness. You take your self awareness and you figure out what your natural swing is and then how do you have to adapt it to these other people in order to get the most out of them?

Amazing. Well, let's tug on the thread for a moment about giving praise. So share with us maybe an example of a coaching client that you've worked with who really was not very engaged or wasn't giving praise. How can someone learn to give praise? Should they do it immediately upon seeing someone doing something? Well, what are some things that we should be paying attention to?

So I had a client who is a CEO of a very fast moving startup and he came to me probably two. It was like actually four or five years in and on the one hand the company's doing really well. On the other hand there was really low morale and almost like mutiny inside of the company. So we started working together and the issue was no one doubted his intent. Like he's not political, he cares about the company. Body, heart, soul. He's there first thing in the morning and he doesn't leave until late at night. He's giving it all for the company. So that was like the positive. And also he's super smart and he had great vision, but he was so demanding and so critical that people just didn't even know. Like they didn't want to deal with him. And in particular, if they went to ask him a question, he would make them feel stupid either by interrogating them, well, how about this? How about this? How about this? Or by asking a question like, well, what didn't you think of this? Like, you dummy, why didn't you think of this? He didn't realize that was about his anxiety, his own critical voice in his head. So that's again an unnatural act. Like his natural swing was what's wrong with you? Get this done. And he was just had a lot of anxiety about the company. As most founders do, no matter how well you're doing, you don't really always know. You don't know how it's going, you're always nervous. So that was leaking out into his employees. So what I helped him do was first of all see that change his style because actually asking questions is very helpful, but as an ally, not as a critic. So we helped, I helped work on his style in that way, and then I helped him basically, if you're a critical founder or leader and you never give praise, they only see you when there's a problem. So I helped him think about how to proactively look for things to praise and compliment. And when you're proactively looking for them, there they are. You did a good job in that meeting. You did a good job in that client, you know, situation. That was a great PowerPoint deck. Thanks for presenting all that. And then I helped him codify that for the company altogether. And they began to do a weekly Wednesday. And so they would all stand in a circle. This is back before we all remote stand in a circle and shout out their own wins, one round. And then the other round would be to shout out other people's wins. And so he created not just himself giving more positive feedback, but a culture where more positive feedback was given to people. That became a more motivating place to work.

Wow, what a, what a great example. And I also, I love the idea of the, the Wednesday. What, what a great way to shine a light on the good. Shine a light on what people are doing and how they're showing up as, as a winner in the business and congratulating them for that. So let's go to then the third section of the book, which is around managing the company. We've talked about managing ourselves, managing them, and now we're talking about the company itself.

Well, I would just say we're running a business here. We can't lose sight of that. So ultimately we need results. What I find is that founders and some leader, many leaders actually don't know how to set goals, don't know how to then look at goals and see do we make them or do we not make them? Don't know how to then recalibrate just basic things like that, you know, sharing a dashboard, codifying things in terms of the most important projects in the company. Are we green, are we yellow or are we red? And also I would just add that you need to have systems and processes and tools in place to help you know, how you're doing so you can direct people. I once, you know, we, one of my clients, a CEO and a founder, we dealt with this because his head of marketing, what he Said was, she's trying so hard. And I don't, you know, but I can't give her feedback because she's trying so hard, but she's not making the cut. So I said, well, how do you know she's not doing a good job? Oh, I just feel it. Okay, well, do you have goals? Well, not really. So. Okay. I mean, I understand that. Right. So then I helped him think about how to set goals and how to have a conversation with her about her goals. And then the feedback conversations were no longer about this feeling he was having and this concern about her personality, but instead they were focused on whether or not she hit the goals. And for him, it took down all the pressure because it was no longer a conversation about her. It was only a conversation about the business goals. So in a sense, they can always drive you and orient you and they can be your North Star.

Wonderful. So I want to make sure that everyone that's watching and listening knows that this book is chock full of tools. And Alyssa provides additional information that's available on her website, which we're, of course, going to link to. So make sure that you definitely apply the lessons learned here. But understand, in the limited time we have, we're just barely scratching the surface, but it goes very deep and provides you all you need to do. Right. All the great information that if you do apply, you will have much greater success and you will learn how to become a leader, how to become that CEO. So I want to ask you before we wrap up here, you started a podcast under the same name as your book From Startup to Grown up, and you started the podcast in 2021. And I've listened to several episodes. I love your style. You've had some fantastic guests on that show. What was the impetus behind starting the podcast? And what have you learned in the number of episodes that you've recorded about the experience of being a podcast host?

That's a good question. I interviewed a number of founders for my book, and I loved it. We had these great conversations, and we had, like an hour long conversation. It was so wonderful. And then I could only publish in the book, you know, 250, 500 words from each of them a few times, and then that was it. And then the book got published, and I thought, oh, God, it was so fun to talk to those founders. And I learned so much, and it was so powerful. Well, I guess you start a podcast, like, you know, now we can podcast, right? So I said, oh, my gosh, I want to have those conversations. And this book, my Book right here is a starting point for the conversation. And so it's published. And the tools in here, I think, are very helpful and universal. And also to me, there's an ongoing dialogue about what it takes to grow personally as a leader, which is my passion, and what it takes to grow personally in light of your being someone, anyone who's going from startup to grownup. And so that's why I started the podcast. And in terms of what I've learned so much. But what I've especially learned is the intense need to manage your own psychology when you're going through any difficult thing. And any difficult thing is like, in your life as well as in your leadership and certainly when you're building a startup.

All right, wonderful. Well, we're going to link to the podcast as well in the show notes. So, Alyssa, what challenge would you like to leave our audience with?

Well, I guess I would say this. We talked about blind spots. So my challenge to everybody here, actually, there's two challenges I want to give you. My challenge to everybody here is to think about what blind spot am I missing? And go find it. Like, either by journaling or by talking to people or something. Go find a blind spot for yourself, just out of interest. You don't have to do anything about it if you don't want to. But one way or the other, challenge yourself to find a blind spot. And the second thing is this. We are in a polarized world right now that is causing a lot of issues for all of us. Do one thing yourself to be less polarized by seeking out someone you disagree with and simply asking them about this topic that you disagree about and listening to their point of view without challenging, without telling your point of view. All you have to do is to listen and accept that they have a point of view and go find out and be curious about what it is.

Fantastic. Two really strong challenges. So please make a point and go out and accept that challenge. Let's see what you come back with. So, Alyssa, before I ask my final question, please share with our audience where we can connect with you, consume your amazing content, and just get into the world of Alyssa Cohn.

Well, thank you. You can come to my website, alyssacon.com and you can download my five scripts to help you navigate difficult and delicate conversations, and one to make your life better. I have a number of scripts in my book, but they're different scripts on my website. So you'll need both to live a good life. And also you can come and follow me on Twitter Lyssacohn and also connect with me on LinkedIn also. Alyssa Cohn, Outstanding.

Thank you so much. So here's my final question to you. What's one of the most valuable lessons that you've learned from a client that you didn't expect?

All of the. This is, this is a theme that has come up with a number of founders is that they I had this, I had this client I still work with who is massively successful. And when I met them, they were kind of like, oh, 20 people in a. We work. And I said to the CEO, oh wow, you really kind of, you know, gotten really nice. This is nice. You've created a nice thing here. And he said, oh, Alyssa, we're just getting started. And they always say to me, we're just getting started. And I've learned the depth of what it means to be anywhere in your life and anywhere at the pinnacle of your career. Anywhere in your career. And to think I'm just getting started.

Love that mindset. That's a good one. I think I'm going to use that as one of my mantras. Beautiful. So, Alyssa, thank you so very much. I'm grateful for you, as the shirt says, which is the reason I wore it today. Thank you for sharing of your knowledge and your wisdom. Thank you for bringing this book to life and helping us all become better leaders and better human beings overall. So thank you.

Thank you Jay for having me. I loved the conversation.

Absolutely. My pleasure. And for all of you, thank you so much for watching and listening and would you appreciate. Please take a moment to subscribe. Rate Leave us a Review we would love it if you would share with us maybe one or two key takeaways from this episode and to enjoy more episodes and to learn how jshear Business Consulting can build a solid foundation for your service based business. All you have to do is visit jshear business consulting.com and until next time, keep learning and growing. Read and apply the lessons in from startup to grown up and we'll see you on the next Business Minds Coffee Chat. Take care. Jay. Jay Shear Jay Shear Jay Shear Jay Shear Business Consultant Jay Shear Jay Shear Business Consulting.