Design Matters: Alisa Cohn

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Why do people stay so busy even if they're not getting anywhere? I think the answer is they don't want to face the sort of still inner voice they don't want to maybe face. Always the hard work that they have to do, the hard personal work or the hard, you know, professional work. It's easier to answer email all day than to like really think about the strategy of where we're going. From the TED Audio Collective, this is Design Matters with Debbie Millman. For 17 years, Debbie Millman has been talking with designers and other creative people about what they do, how they got to be who they are, and what they're thinking about and working on. On this episode, Alyssa Cohn talks about how she became a coach to entrepreneurs. My ultimate goal in my life is to make a difference. My mission is to light 10,000 candles foreign.

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How do you take a sprout of an idea and grow it into a billion dollar? The conventional wisdom about startups is that they're all about brilliant products and long, long hours. There may be some truth in that, but according to Alyssa Cohn, it's also about you. The starter upper Alyssa is an executive coach who specializes in getting new businesses off the ground. She's worked with companies like Venmo, Etsy and Wirecutter. And now she has distilled her wisdom into a brand new book. From startup to grown up. Grow your leadership to grow your business. Alyssa Cohn, welcome to Design Matters.

Thank you so much, Debbie. It's such a joy to be here with you.

Alyssa, is it true you once got the rapper Jelly Donut to freestyle about meetings?

That is true. That is true. We were, I was interviewing him for my Forbes column. You know what he does is he's a rapper. He's also an improv artist. And we were talking about what improv is, can add to business and to startups. And so, yep, I got him to rap about meetings at the very end of our discussion.

What is there to rap about?

Meetings. Meetings give you a beating. Yeah, yeah. He was like me and you in the zoom. You know, I'm not sure if he would call it his best rap ever, but he was pretty. He's extremely talented. You know, he's one of the members of the Freestyle Love supreme, coming back to Broadway now. And he's so talented and that's what I loved about him. And again, the notion of what improv brings to business and what improv brings to startups. The idea that you have to make do with what you have. And what he had right then was meetings.

Alyssa, you grew up in Massachusetts, and I understand you were quite good at algebra, so much so that you competed with the boys in your class in sixth grade. But as you made your way through school, that changed and your confidence plummeted. What happened?

Debbie, it's true what they say about you, that you go deep in your research. My goodness, that is absolutely true. And you know what did happen? I got into geometry in high school, and for whatever reason, I got intimidated. And I think that there is a meme which in my case was true, and I think is true at times where girls have a fall off in math. And it took me, frankly, a long time to get over that fall off. I mean, I was. I loved algebra. I excelled at algebra. Somehow after that moment in high school, I lost all my confidence in math, and I never really regained it until I went to business school and I had to attend math camp before I was allowed into business school. And not only that, but to prep for that, I took calculus. I know. And then I. Right. And then I also took stats, you know, statistics. And actually, I thought, huh, this actually isn't that hard after all.

You said that your coaching imprint really began when you were 13 years old. What happened at that point to create that imprint?

So I was part of a youth group, a Jewish youth group called Young Judea. And it turned out it was a peer led youth group. I didn't even know what that was. I was only 13 years old. But what I did know is that I, and all of us were facilitating discussions for the rest of our peers, for the rest of the people in the youth group. Other youth groups went to the movies or they went bowling or something. What we did was we had intense intellectual discussions. And I started facilitating when I was 13, and I got a lot of practice from that period. And I can see that the roots of my profession now and my joy and love for and my skill in facilitation started then.

Despite your interest, your early interest in musical theater and your experiments in standup comedy, you went to Boston University and studied journalism. What did you think you wanted to do professionally at that point?

I had no idea. But I do know that I love to read. And what I really wanted to do was to be an English major. And my parents were like, you're not going to be an English major. We are not sending you to college to go get a liberal arts degree. What are you gonna do with that. So we all decided that journalism was close enough. Right. So that's what I ended up doing. And I didn't know what I wanted to do, but I did a number of internships in journalism during that period to know that I probably did not want to be a journalist. At the time, I was quite shy. And so it was. I know, I was shocked by that. I know I was very shy. I grew up a shy kid. Which is, by the way, why it was so helpful to find this youth group. I started to find my tribe of people. But when I was doing my few internships as a journalist, I had a lot of trouble asking strangers questions. And then I had a lot of trouble going back to them and asking them follow up questions. So that was very difficult for me. So I just knew that wasn't my thing. But I did like education and I did like the university environment. So my next two jobs kind of reflected that. And I sort of. Until I really found my way, I just kind of made up a bunch of stuff.

What made you decide to go on and get an MBA in Strategy and Organizational Development from Cornell?

Well, I worked at Northeastern and I was the chief of staff to the provost and we were doing strategic planning. And so at some point, the provost just made this offhand comment. He just said, oh, you can't manage faculty because they have tenure. And by the way, even I was quite young and I didn't even quite get it. But I began to understand that what he meant was, because you can't fire them. And I thought, well, that can't be that. People will only do what you want them to do for the organization if you fire them. Like as, you know, sort of this weapon you have. And I wanted to go off to business school to think about that and to learn more about why people did things for organizations or sadly didn't do them. But I got there and I got all turned around. I went to Cornell. And the focus at Cornell is very much finance. It's very much Wall Street. So actually I ended up focusing in finance and strategy and accounting, of all things. You're a cpa, I understand. I'm a C. And I loved accounting.

I loved it.

In some ways, it's just like journalism. It's kind of storytelling for business, and it's the language of business. And so I loved the analytical approach. I loved figuring things out, and I just really enjoyed it. And I saw it as a triumph over the past.

Now, I understand that when you went to Cornell, you. You felt that you had something to Prove? Why did you feel like you had something to prove? What were you looking to prove?

Well, I think that's about two things. It's like identity, you know, that I was this like little girl from a small town. I'm from Holliston, Massachusetts, and that's like this rural place. And I just didn't think that I could go off and achieve, like, wow, you know, get my MBA or something like that. Also, I was from the nonprofit world, right. So I was a journalism major from the nonprofit world and I had to go to math camp before they let me in. So I felt like I had to overcome certain challenges to prove that I belong there. And so that was identity. And second, I was still dealing with this lack of confidence in terms of my ability to do, you know, the so called hard stuff of business. So again, numbers and finance and, you know, analysis and even I had gone there to do the so called soft stuff of business. Right. More the organizational development stuff. So it took me time to unravel all that. But in the meantime, I was on a mission to be successful at business school.

After graduation, you became a strategy consultant at Price WaterhouseCoopers, where you were on a fast track to become a partner. And ordinarily it takes 12 to 14 years at PwC to become a partner. You were going to be doing it in five. What were the specifics of the fast track program?

It was called the Advanced Development program and they took a number of graduates from so called top business schools. And the program, the ADP program, was rotational. So they showed you a whole bunch of sides of the firm, which was an incredible experience for me to be part of that. And they gave you a mentor. They really put a lot of resources behind you to help you achieve and succeed on that speed level.

Two and a half years in, you wake up one morning hoping that you have the flu so you didn't have to go to work. What happened in that two and a half years culminating in that moment to create such a sense of doom?

Yeah. So when I was graduating from Cornell and I went and talked to my professor, my accounting professor, Mark Nelson, I said, I'm going to join PwC. He said, that's great. I said, I'm going to be an auditor. And he said, that will be very refreshing for the audit profession. I thought, oh, what do you mean? And then I found out what he meant in the sense that, by the way, PwC is a fantastic firm and was great to me through and through. But for me, I just didn't quite realize that I was really getting into a system, a very large system that was sort of hierarchical, that you had to do certain things, you know, sequential. First you did this, and then you did this and that. It felt to me very regimented. And I guess I also just have to acknowledge that I was not passionate about the work. I was passionate about the client service. I was the only one who figured out that my client from this company and my client from the other company shared a passion for synchronized skating and knew each other. Right. Because they were on the same synchronized skating team.

What are the odds?

I know, like, I was the kind of person who was very interested in the people and also, like, their jobs. I loved controls work because we interviewed people about their jobs, but I just didn't find the work itself engaging. And I felt like it was a lot of, like, routines over and over and didn't leave a lot of room for creativity for me at my level.

18 hours after you woke up that day hoping you had the flu, you.

Got the flu, I got the flu. Can I just tell everybody, be careful of what you wish for.

Right. You ended up being rushed to the emergency room. You were in bed for two weeks, and every time you thought about going back to work, your fever would spike back up. I guess it was then that you decided that PwC was not your calling. And to leave that particular fast track. How hard was that for you to do?

Extremely hard. Very, very hard. I had a lot invested in this fast track program, and I had a lot invested in my future. Is all set. I'm good. And also there was a lot of people who mentored me at the firm and who were fantastic to me. And just this notion of, what am I going to do next? I have no idea. And I'm now going to leave for no good reason was not my path. Right. That was not the way I was sort of raised. Although, actually, I'm going to talk about the path because it reminds me of my favorite Joseph Campbell quote, which is, if you can see your path all the way through to the end, you are following someone else's path. Your path only becomes clear step by step as each foot hits the ground. That might be a paraphrase of the quote, good enough. But that's how I think of it. And I know that at that time, I saw my path all the way through to the end. And the only thing I had to go on then was the music in my head said, to make a difference. It was just kept repeating, to make a difference. To make a difference. That the Work of my hands matters, and I tried to go out and see what is going to be the thing that's going to let me know that the work I do makes a difference.

When you started telling people that you were leaving, people at PwC, people in your family, what was the response?

The people at PwC were quite gracious, extremely gracious. And one of them, actually the head partner, Jay Mattey, he pulled me into his office and he said, if you were going to leave to go to, like, a different firm or even to, like, a large company, I would try to talk you out of it. But I can see that you just want something different. So what we'll do is we'll give you a few weeks and maybe even a few months, and we'll introduce you to some clients and we'll let you kind of think about what you want to do and so you have a little time. So gracious.

That's incredible.

It was incredible. It was really incredible. Unheard of. I know. Actually, he said, you know, I always tell people if they're thinking about leaving, they should come and talk to me. And, like, they don't. But telling my parents was difficult, as in, like, what am I going to do? But they were sort of used to me by then making, you know, some moves that they didn't necessarily agree with or, you know, want. For me, telling my friends was confronting because it brought up the next years, were a lot of my imagining them saying, oh, what is she doing now? You know, like, in this kind of judgy way. It took me a little while to find myself.

You ended up getting two different offers. One was from Goldman Sachs in their private client services. One was from a startup. You decided to take the role with the startup. Mm. Why?

When I met with the folks at Goldman, it was like the same thing as PwC. You walk in, it's a big office, there's a lot of glass, there's a conference room. And even though it was like Goldman Sachs, wow. I knew it was the same thing. I went into the startup and it was like this little rental space on the third floor of some place in Boston, and it was kind of a mess, and it was tables everywhere, and we were all in the same room, and it was different and it was vibrant. And I just thought, well, if you want something different, this is the thing. And also I even knew at the time, you know, why was I even talking to Goleman? Like, you want to make a difference, right? You want to make a difference? And so I realized even then, vaguely That I was getting caught up in the same thing that I'd gotten caught up in, like, oh, your career. Make the smart choice. You didn't go to business school to, like, throw it away. You've got to do something with pedigree. And so I'm glad that I had the courage to then say yes to the startup, even though it was a difficult choice. And I certainly had regrets about it initially.

Well, after one week at the startup, you decided you made the wrong decision and then went sort of crawling back to Goldman. So tell us about that. What happened?

It was chaotic at the startup. I did not realize what chaos was until experiencing it there. It felt it was a stretch for me. It was uncomfortable. And there was a way in which I was like, oh, man, this is not going anywhere. I can't believe I threw that thing. It was like I threw that away. How could you throw that away? Anyone in your shoes that had your pedigree and your background would have wanted that. One thing about me, Debbie, and I have learned. I have learned to do this more often than not is that I will go back. I will go back and I'll say, like, you know, swallow my pride and even swallow my fear and call him back up. And we, you know, made an appointment to talk, and I just laid it out for him and I said, well, I think I made a mistake. I'd really like to revisit the job offer that you. Revisiting quotes. Yeah, exactly. And, yeah, and he said no. He said that was your. It was like, really a week or two later. It was very, very recent. And he said, no, that was your chance, and I don't think this is right for you if you didn't want this initial. He said something like that.

That's incredible. That's incredible that he said no just one week later.

Yeah, well, but it's smart because if you.

You know, I remember when I turned down my. You know, the story. When I turned down my CEO offer, the CEO position at Sterling Brands. It took me four months to make that decision. And at which point, having. Before even having said no, my partner came to me and said, you know, just to put this in your bonnet, anything that takes you four months to decide is probably something you don't want to do. But he knew that after a week. That's pretty cool.

Yeah, it was pretty cool. He must. I mean, whatever he knew or thought, I don't know, because the truth is that I'm sure he just kind of already moved on. However, he gave me two real gifts in that conversation he said, you know, the reason, he said, the reason I offered this job to you is not because of your pedigree. The reason I offered this job was because you had done stand up comedy, as you said, I had done experiment stand up comedy in Boston. And he said, and I knew that somebody who could do that would be somebody who'd be successful here. He also said, you should know that you have a superpower. You can get people to get on your side or to believe in you. You have credibility. And I was very young and very inexperienced in the world of work still and quite unsure. And so I wrote it down. I had this little book I would write down, like to inspire myself and to comfort myself. And I wrote down, Alyssa, you have a superpower. And I still have it because. And I still think about it sometimes because he was right. I didn't belong to Goldman and I knew that. So I went back to the startup and I was more confident because I thought, you gotta make this work. And also you don't have another option for the moment. And I'm glad I did that because I was not wondering, how did you.

Make your experience at the startup better? Because it seems like that was really entirely something self directed.

Yes, I think I just embraced the chaos. Like that is what startups often are initially. And I don't mean chaos like nobody knows what's going on. I mean chaos like there's way too much to do, it's not always clear how to get it done and you're really trying to lay the tracks and ride the train at the same time. So it's just overwhelming, but with a new attitude, to be honest with you, that's good for me, like that's where I shine, you know, And I enjoyed the people I worked with and we were able to team really well and we were able to build a lot of cool stuff and I had incredible experiences there and I'm really, I'm so happy that I was able to have those experiences early on.

You've declared that this was when your love affair with startups really began. But it wasn't until you volunteered at a Woo Woo Body and Soul conference, a conference you ordinarily would not have gone to, that you heard what you refer to as violins.

That's right.

What happened?

So at the time I was going out with my boyfriend, who he was a yoga guy, like a yogi. So I was like seeking. I probably was still working at PwC, but I was seeking and he dragged me to this body and even just Saying it Body and Soul, that was the name of the conference and the magazine, which is Body and Soul. But not only did we go to the conference, we volunteered for the conference so that we could go for free. You know, that was his game. I was like, that's a great idea. So we went to the orientation for the volunteers, and at the end they said, okay, now Cheryl Richardson is going to speak to the volunteers. And I'm thinking, who is Cheryl Richardson? And do I have to stay for this? Can I leave? There she was in the front of the room, and she was so dynamic, and she. I don't remember what she said, but she was so dynamic and so inspirational and like, you can do it. It felt like you can make a difference and you can shine your light. I thought, what? Who is this? What is that? I want that. And literally, in my mind's eye, I'm like, that's it. I want to be a coach. And that's where I say, like, violins played, you know, it was this moment of understanding and knowing this is me. That's what I want to do.

Did you train to become a coach?

Yes. So I followed her around in the conference, and she was very nice to me. And she. I said, I want to be a coach. And she said, you take coach training. Okay, tell me what to do. So she sent me to a coach training. Actually, the first coach training place or organization there was called Coach U. And I did training through CoachU. And, you know, I coached all my friends for free, and I hired my own coach. And so when the startup world didn't quite work out, I was ready to. I was ready to sort of make my way as a coach.

You decided to pitch your coaching business at a vendor fair at your local gym. You were still in Boston at the time. It was an evening in February. It was sleeting outside. You didn't want to go, but you pulled yourself together and told yourself that it wasn't the sleet or the vendor fair that you wanted. What you wanted was the life of your dreams. And you stated that if you wanted the life of your dreams, you were going to walk through the sleet to go down and present yourself at the vendor faire at the gym, which you did. And you offered complimentary lessons to the attendees. And your first coaching client was a man named Rick Samuels. Tell us about Rick. Tell us all about Rick.

Wow, Debbie, all of that's true. Rick Samuels, he was, I guess, a member of my gym. This is a long time ago, but he, like many people signed up for this free complimentary session, which half of them did not show up for, you know, on the phone, but Rick did. And Rick and I had a long talk about him feeling stuck in his career. And I spent time, you know, just asking him a bunch of questions. And I gave him some insight about himself that no one had ever shared with him before. And also I gave him specific steps, like we talked together and agreed on specific next steps about what he needs to do to make the changes in his career that he said he wanted to make. And for me, it was like breathing in and breathing out. I was made to do this. And for him it was a revelation. He said, oh, I've been in therapy for years, we've never gotten here. And I felt that's fantastic. And then he hired me on the spot.

What is the difference between coaching and psychotherapy?

I think increasingly they may be, you know, converging in a way, because I think that psychotherapists have become a little more so called directive. But I would say that, you know, therapists, really, first of all, they are trained, of course, to handle all sorts of things which are, you know, not just the regular normal, I'm stuck at work, right. They're, you know, trained to handle moods and panic attacks and things that might be going on inside you. Also, I think that therapists dive deep and think a lot about the scar tissue that may prevent you from doing the things you want to do and help you at that level. Coaching deep coaches, and I think I'm a deep coach, we definitely go back in time and think about experiences and times that you had in the past that are leading to this moment. But coaching always ends in action. And coaching always ends with this notion of what are you going to do differently? What behavioral activity are you going to take away from this to help you make progress? So I think a lot about coaching being about forward motion. And I think therapy helps you also kind of gain the understanding of the architecture of how you got to be this way.

This is a question I probably should have asked at the top of the show because as you're talking, I'm realizing that some of my listeners might not even know what a coach actually does and might think we're talking about sports. So talk about what it means to be a business coach or an executive coach.

Coaching is its own domain. And so when I think about coaching, I think the way I describe it to people is I help you think about where are you, where are you going and how are you going to get there? And so what that means is we do self awareness and self assessment your situation and then, you know, if it was perfect, if you were acting as a professional or in your personal life in a way that is exactly ideal, how you want to be acting, describe that, what would that look like? And then what are the specific tools, what are the specific behaviors, what are the specific structures you need to have in your work and in your life to then help you achieve that ideal state? So I hope that gives you a sense of coaching. And then there's also a context of coaching being a sounding board, because the CEOs I work with and, you know, senior executives that I work with don't have anyone else to talk to. So sometimes the best use of a coach is to have somebody who's safe and non judgmental and they're listening to you get through the things that you're stuck on because then you can come out the other side with better thinking and a better sort of plan forward.

Thirty years ago, having a coach was primarily kept a secret. It was something that people weren't quite as forthright about. Now people are proud to have a coach talk about their coaches. It's a badge of honor. In a lot of ways. Things have really changed. What would you say is the primary driver of that cultural shift?

There is definitely, especially in the past, like five or 10 years, more an understanding of what it's really like to be a leader in a company. In my world of startups, there's a lot more light shined on what founders and CEOs have to go through and how difficult it is. There's more permission to be vulnerable and real. So in light of all that, people are just more open about having a coach and other kinds of tools to help them. Just like successful athletes have a coach.

We know how you got your first client, Rick Samuels. How did you get your second and third and fourth?

First of all, I just want to say that the reason I was able to focus on the life of my dreams is because I had actually gone to the trouble of making a vision board.

Wow.

Yeah. Which I still have talk about, you know, body and soul. Right. Woo woo. Talking about woo woo. I did. And you know, it was uncharacteristic of me to think I'm going to make a vision board. I'm going to make a collage of my ideal life. So I had a pictorial representation of my ideal life, which was my guiding light in all the things that I did, like getting my first client, like going down to the gym that day. But also getting my first client. So one thing I did was I taught adult ed. This was the Boston center for Adult Ed. And I pitched them a course on money coaching. I was like, very passionate about, you.

Got your cpa, girl, let's make use of it.

Exactly. I was very passionate about making a difference so they could buy their first home, they could put their kid through college, they could retire. So I thought, well, the issue is people are confused about money. And a friend of mine called me, and I was leaving for the class, and my friend Doris, and she said, oh, what are you doing? I gotta go. I'm running late. Oh, what are you running late for? I'm teaching a class. I gotta go. And she said, oh, what class? It's on money coaching. I gotta go. One of my clients is looking for someone to teach business acumen in their curriculum. Are you available for that? I was like, huh? I got plenty of time. Plenty of time to talk to you, Doris. Busy is a decision. Yeah. Yes, that's right. That's right. That's a very good point. So I began sort of hustling as much as I can and telling people. And eventually, this is a life lesson when you tell enough people what you're up to and actually people want to help. And Doris put me in touch with emc, which is a fantastic company that got bought by Dell about three years ago. And I thought, well, if I start teaching in the business acumen curriculum, I will very quickly work my way into leadership curriculum. That's what's going to happen. And that's exactly what happened. And then once I was working at emc, that became an opening for other referrals. It became an opening just to have, like, the credibility of working with emc. So a lot of things kind of flowed from there.

Why startups?

I moved to New York probably about 14 years ago. Part of what was happening in New York was the tech startup scene was nascent in those days, and I was excited to be part of that building process of being part of this tech scene that we were building here in the startup scene. And I met the GM of Foursquare at this. Actually, it was a musical theater event through a Harvard alumni group. So, like, what? And also, why was I there? But he was there, Evan Cohen. And we talked and we just became friends, and we would meet for coffee now and again, and he would just sort of share what was going on with him and what was going on at Foursquare. And then about a year later, he introduced me to the HR person and I started doing manager training there, and then from there, I started coaching a number of the executives there, including Dennis Crowley, the founder and at the time, CEO of Foursquare. And I remembered it was like a flash back to Boston and that startup life that I loved. And so it was a combination of being thrown into the startup world and realizing that I could make a difference in New York, and that was very exciting.

Since then, you've been named as the number one top startup coach in the world. You were also named the number one global guru of startups. And you've worked with startups including Venmo, Etsy, the wirecutter, Tory burch. You've coached CEOs and C suite executives at companies including Sony, IBM, Google, Microsoft, Bloomberg, the New York Times, Calvin Klein. The list goes on and on. You've also just published your first book. It's titled From Startup to Grown Up, Grow youw Leadership to Grow youw Business. Alyssa, congratulations. I know you've been working on this for a long time.

Thank you, Debbie. Thank you so much. And I have been working on this for a long time. It's nice to hear all that. Thank you.

You start your book by declaring that leadership is an unnatural act. Tell me more.

You know, a client said that to me once with this quizzical look, and I had to agree, right? Giving feedback to other adults is not natural. Praising someone who has just done a bad job, which sometimes you have to do, is not natural. Managing yourself when you're, like, freaking out, when you're feeling irritated, where you have to be smooth and polished, and these are not natural things. These are all learned behaviors. And I think it's important that we recognize that leadership overall is a learned behavior.

You said that you know that leadership is an unnatural act because you've witnessed it. Helping CEOs commit the unnatural act of leadership for now, over two decades. Based on what you know now, what is the biggest challenge founders and startup leaders face?

Startup founders have to face the challenge of the scale of their business being extremely rapid, the velocity of the scale of their business that requires them to grow their own leadership style, their own behavioral style, their change and adaptation at a velocity which is just enormously hard to do. So there's a lot embedded in that. The different things you have to change and adjust and learn and grow. But ultimately, you have to do that in concert with the ups and downs of the business, which are challenging, and then also, hopefully, if you're successful, the rapid scale. The rapid velocity of scale of the company.

You write that while Your title may make you the boss, your people make you a leader. Can you talk a little bit more about what that means?

You know what that means, is that people will follow you because you're the boss, and they'll do what you tell them to if that's kind of your style because you're the boss. But as a startup founder growing into a leader, and really as any leader or CEO, you have to earn the right for people to follow you, for people to trust you, for people to agree with your or see your direction and believe in your direction, even though they may not actually have any evidence themselves to follow you, even when they disagree with your direction. You need to sort of earn that leadership through influence, through appreciating them, through them, knowing that you care both about them and also about ultimately the success of the business more than you care about yourself. And so all of those elements are in play that you have to activate to get people to really get behind you in a fulsome and significant way that you need when you're trying to do something hard.

You know, leadership feels like a real privilege, but it has a lot of responsibilities.

Yeah.

And it feels to me that there's a lot of accountability to your people when you're a leader. One of the things that really struck me in your book was a quote that you include from Chip Conley, the founder of Joie de Vivre, the hotel chain, who states in the book, don't mistake activity for achievement. I want to make that a tattoo for a couple of reasons. One, it could apply to anything. I remember one time sitting with one of my graduate students who was on the verge of failing out. We were sitting with the provost and he was saying how hard he worked, how hard he worked, how hard he worked. And the provost said sort of the same thing. Don't mistake working hard for working smart. And I also think it applies in another area where people want to appear busy or want to feel busy, so they feel like they matter or that they're important or that they're distracting themselves from whatever it is that they don't want to face. Why do humans seek out so much activity to sort of keep themselves afloat?

I think that actually both of those ways of framing mistaking activity for achievement have to do with our capacity for self denial. So the question you ask is, why do people stay so busy even if they're not getting anywhere? I think the answer is they don't want to face the sort of still inner voice they don't want to maybe face always the hard work that they have to do, the hard personal work or the hard, you know, professional work. It's easier to answer email all day than to like really think about the strategy of where we're going, which is difficult intellectual labor. But the second thing is also true that people do feel like if I'm working and working and working on this treadmill, at least I won't get fired. You know, at least I'm doing something. And you know, in a large company, sometimes that's true. You can hide more easily. I will say inside of a startup, it's just not going to work that way because with startups they are lean and also they require everyone to give discretionary effort. That's what startup people do. And if you're not able to make that activity count and make it worthwhile and achieve things based on it, ultimately you're just falling behind and you're keeping the team behind. And that's not sustainable for a startup which is either fighting for its life or growing with a massive velocity.

When you start with a new client, the first question you ask them is simply, what's going on? Why do you start with that question?

Because first of all, I really want to know, right? I want to know what's like, why are we here? I try not to wait it, especially if I have some background information about why someone else thinks that we're here or why they originally called me, because I kind of want to know what's up right now. And that's where we're going to enter the discussion.

You talk about how the act of reflecting, reflection needs to become a reflex and that founders and all leaders need to learn to reflect, get in the habit of reflecting and turn to reflection rather than reaction when bad things happen. And that really surprised me because it was really the first time I became really aware of the inner workings of what it means to be or have an executive coach. And I wasn't expecting it to be so sort of philosophical and self reflective.

Yes, well, I think that's important. You know, two things come to mind. One is that if you're a leader, I just spoke to one of my clients two weeks ago and she said to me, I knew that the startup was going to have ups and downs, but I didn't realize they would come within five minutes of each other, you know, times ten a day, right? And I was like, yep, that's the life you signed up for. And the issue is that people just get caught up in their own emotions and then they have to address the all Hands or have the customer call or sort out this difficult situation going on in marketing. So they have to really stop and reflect and think about what am I trying to get done here. And they need to find a way to compartmentalize all that baggage from the past three hours of whatever that was in order to put themselves in the mind's eye, to be effective, to be amazing, to be the leader here and now. So that's one reason that reflection is so critical. And the second is because it's just. It's an incredible tool. I was working with a founder one time, and he was telling me about his many complaints, many problems, many complaints. And he's not wrong. There's always a lot of complaints inside of a startup, and things are not. Were usually not working ideally. So he was expressing to me all the things he was going that were going wrong. And I just got this inkling and I said, you know, I'd love you to write that down, all of those things, and spend a few days journaling every day about all the problems and concerns and what they bring up for you. And so he, to his credit, took that assignment away. And three days later, he sent me his. He actually scanned his journal and sent it to me, and we talked it through and the whole journal was these complaint, this complaint, this complaint, this complaint. And it came back to my people aren't doing the right thing. But then he realized, I haven't told them what I'm expecting, what the context is. It always came back to him in terms of what he had missed inside of communication, inside of context. And I think that reflection is the most powerful tool to recognize that and realize that. So if you really will go deep and you do the work, you see the root cause of some of these things. Otherwise you just walk around thinking, oh, they're not good, I should fire them. No, no, you should give them. You should give them context. Let's try that. Or coach them. Let's try that. But you can't get there unless you're willing to unpeel some of these layers inside of you.

Let's talk about the role of authenticity in leadership. It's a big word we hear a lot now. And I think just the idea of saying something is. Needs to be authentic means it already stops being authentic.

That's true.

But on the one hand, you have the notion that a leader is supposed to be authentic, and on the other hand, there's the platitude. Never let them see you sweat. So it seems like authenticity is both complicated and polarizing how do you understand what it means to be authentic? And how do you coach your clients on the role of authenticity in leadership?

Yeah, it's a good question and something that I think about all the time, because, listen, of course you should be authentic, whatever that means. The problem is that it means a lot of different things at a lot of different times. Walt Whitman said, we are multitudes, and it is so true. We are multitudes. So your authentic self can change at any given moment. At the same time, you need to actually take on the mantle and the role of the leader, and you need to do so in a way that feels more or less genuine to you. So if you are a quiet, more solitary type and you try to go out and be like a big extrovert, that's going to be weird for everybody. However, if you are a quiet, solitary type and your authentic way of doing things is to be silent, actually the role of the CEO, it requires you to communicate in different contexts. So you've got to find the way to learn to do that in a way that feels more or less comfortable to you and that you do it even if you don't want to do it. And the way I think of all of that is ultimately, you get to let your humanity show, which is certainly important because I would just add vulnerability is an important tool of leadership, because when you're vulnerable, other people recognize they can be vulnerable and safe with you and inside of your company. So that's really good. But if you start freaking out in an authentic way, that's not going to really inspire confidence in the people around you. So the way I land on authenticity is that you have to be. You have to show your humanity, and you have to learn the tools that you need to be an effective leader in your role, a CEO, or whatever leader, you are in your role in a way that's going to feel ultimately natural and genuine to you. By the way, the last thing is that, like, when you start a new skill, just like with everything, you're gonna be uncomfortable. You're gonna be all elbows and knees. You're not gonna do it right. So you also need to be able to tolerate the sort of learning curve that's necessary as you try on new behaviors.

It's so interesting because high achievement people don't like to do anything that they're not good at right out of the gate. And I don't know that that's ever possible, ever. You know, we can't do very much well without being taught. And so it's an interesting Conundrum, being a leader, when you're expected to be excellent at everything but still have to learn new skills.

Yeah, it's really true. And I think that's the other thing about as we. You said high achieving people, and it's so true. And when you're kids, it's acceptable to learn something, but somehow when we get to be adults, it's like somehow not acceptable anymore. And that's why I think culture is so important, right? If you're the CEO and you say, listen, I'm going to make mistakes, we're going to make mistakes and we're going to have a learning organization, culture, that's going to help everybody recognize that learning is valued around here.

I want to talk to you about imposter syndrome. You talk a lot about it. You write a lot of really important things in your book about imposter syndrome. And you have a ridiculously successful executive quoted in your book that states, the more successful I am, the more I have imposter syndrome. How common is that? And how do you view imposter syndrome? How do you define imposter syndrome? Just like the whole thing.

The whole thing, yeah. Well, so imposter syndrome is simply this notion that you're a fake, you're a fraud, they're going to find you out and the game is over, the jig is up. That is imposter syndrome. Your luck is going to run out. And so I would say that I'm not going to say all. There's no such thing as, like, all, every single one. But most founders at some point along the way have imposter syndrome. It might be little and it might be big. It might be like, I just screwed up that board meeting. The board is going to think that I'm an idiot. The board's going to fire me. That might just be like a little momentary panic as compared to, I'm trying to raise a round, it's not working. I'm not going to be able to raise this round. We're going to have to close up shop. TechCrunch is going to write about it and all things are going to go bad, right? Like all this catastrophizing and, you know, it's quite debilitating, right? Imposter syndrome. And if you've ever experienced it, you know that it's just a very difficult feeling to come up against your failings and this notion like, you know, the jig is up. So it's helpful to find tools to get over it, right? Because chances are, if you're at that stage, right, you've done something right. And you have done enough things in your life to know it's not just luck. So the best tool that I've ever offered people, that people find very helpful is called the highlight reel. It's the idea that you look to your past and you find your successes, your accomplishments, the things you're proud of from your past. And if you write them down a couple of times, it kind of like grooves them into your, into your brain. And if you read them over daily as a practice, it reminds you, hey, I've actually accomplished a lot of things. And then if you're actually having an imposterous syndrome attack right now, you can pull up your list of accomplishments, your highlight reel, and you can read it just to give yourself a little more perspective and a little more evidence that actually you've done a couple of important things in your life.

You write that the phrase imposter syndrome is not a single monolithic thing. It takes many forms and flavors of self doubt that get triggered in founders in certain situations. Now, you talked about the highlight reel. What about for people that are not founders or have reached the pinnacle of their careers yet, for those that are struggling with even just feeling like they're not a fraud, Is there anything that can be done to help people? Just one thing that they can do differently in thinking about that?

Well, I think the highlight reel is helpful for them too. And then I would add that self compassion just kind of, that's actually back to reflection, tuning into these voices in your head and then asking the voice in your head that's being critical or self doubt or jeering at you, or telling you your luck is going to run out. You could say, huh, who are you and what do you have to teach me? And then listen to the answer and see if anything shows up. And if you can get into dialogue with that part of you, it's healing. It's also quite interesting what comes up, as in, there's something here for me to learn. So I'll give you an example. One of the founders I work with, he came up against this imposter syndrome and he couldn't shake it, he couldn't sleep, he was having panic attacks. And we just talked it through and I asked him to do this writing exercise. Who are you and what do you have to teach me? And he, you know, scoffed at it, but he was willing to do it. And he realized that even though his board had never called him out on this, and even though he was running a, you know, what was then a successful business, which got even more successful. He realized that he did not feel like he really understood his metrics and he really understood his business enough. But the truth is he had more work to do in understanding his business. He had more work to do in digging deeper in terms of what the metrics should be, what some of the industry norms and practices were, and even maybe understanding what some of the old timers in the industry had to add. Because, you know, a lot of times the startups are like, oh, we're disrupting the old timers. But actually he was missing some of that knowledge and he went and did that work. It didn't take that long, but it really solved his I'm an imposter in this industry problem. And he wouldn't have gotten there if we hadn't done this woo woo writing exercise.

Well, another thing that you include in the book that's actually been really helpful to me is the idea of vaporizing imposter syndrome by coming to terms with your underlying fears and concerns about who you think you are. And that's been really helpful for me. I think that's a wonderful exercise. Can you talk a little bit more about that for our listeners that might be suffering from their own imposter syndrome?

So actually I just want to first mention that I spoke to Susie Batiste, who is the founder and former CEO of Poo Pourri. Poo Pourri is this amazing, like breakthrough product that took off like a virally and Susie Batiste told me, I don't have imposter syndrome. I am an imposter. I've never done this before and I love that she said that. And I think that young people should recognize that they don't need to know everything in order to be successful and that there's lots of different ways to learn. So if you're feeling this insecurity, this self doubt again, I would go back to tuning into what are you afraid of? What are you concerned about? What are you thinking about yourself and how are you judging yourself? And then go out and find answers. You need more education. Often young people need more mentorship. Maybe people who have been successful in your field that you want to be successful in, or maybe just people you admire and that they live their life in a great way. If you can find those mentors, they will help you find your way, but they will also give you, in doing so, amazing, positive feedback about what you're already doing. And that's going to help both you feel confident about where you are now and help you feel confident in the steps that you walk along your path.

I have to urge people listening to make sure that they play that part that Alyssa just said again. And then go out and ask people to be your mentors because people are not going to approach you and say, hey, can I mentor you? Unless you're really lucky, most of the time it comes from asking. And one thing that you do talk about quite eloquently in your book is the role of asking for the things that you want.

Yeah, asking for the things that you want is the way you're going to get the things that you want. And as my mentor Marshall Goldsmith told me one day, you don't ask, you don't get. And Debbie, I just want to also mention that I myself have two or three peer coaches. So we're mutual mentors for each other. And there's one peer coach I have who's inside of my field who's also a fellow coach and we kind of coach each other and mentor each other. And then there's somebody I have who's more in the startup world and actually in the investing world and we both mentor each other and coach each other and it's a very fruitful relationship. It's also a way to get to know somebody in a different way environment and it's a way where you can both benefit from the relationship very sort of clearly and specifically. And I just would say everybody can find like five different people to peer coach with each other because you can always benefit from the perspective of somebody else.

Alyssa, I want to talk to you a little bit about the difference between leading and managing. And you write in your book that leaders are always seen as not so subtly as better. People say, as if bragging, I'm a great leader, but I'm a terrible manager. Talk about the difference between leading and managing and why both roles are so critical to running not just a successful startup, but to running a successful company.

Yes, for sure. So it is true that leaders bring a lot of important qualities, right? So we think about leadership and that brings the vision, that brings the charisma, the speaking ability, the ability to galvanize people around you, probably the strategy. Also we think about leaders as looking into the future, two or three or more years. So that is super important. But if you're just doing that, then who is doing the execution? Right. The managers are the ones that are in the day to day hand to hand combat of making sure everyone understands their goals, setting goals, learning how to delegate and delegating work to other people, helping People by giving them specific, clear feedback, helping people resolve problems with each other. That is the day to day work of management. And nothing happens without that work. I think we need to celebrate that work much more and give them equal status in the eyes of people as we do leaders.

I have a few more questions for you and then I'm going to ask if you can share one of the most remarkable things in your book, which are scripts. You have scripts in the appendix of the book that allow people to see samples of what you might say in particularly difficult situations. But before we do that, what is your ultimate goal as a coach?

Hmm. My ultimate goal in my life is to make a difference. My mission is to light 10,000 candles, and I think a lot about lighting the candle of the person I'm with right now. You know, making someone's day right now. So that's my overall mission. When I think about my goal as a coach, I'm really focused on helping this person do more of the things that will make him or her more successful and the company more successful and doing fewer of the things that get in their way. So it's addition and it's subtraction. And my ultimate goal as a coach, I love having deep conversations, but I want them to be able to take a different tactic, a more effective tactic on a random Tuesday afternoon. I know that I'm successful when two years later, eight years later, 15 years later, someone comes to me and says, yeah, then I heard your voice in my head and I realized I shouldn't do this, I should do that. So then I did that. And then, like, good things happened, right? So that, like, always makes my day. And my goal is to enable people to achieve the things that they want to achieve.

For someone thinking of starting a company, what advice would you give them?

My advice is do it and know in advance what you're getting yourself into. People think about the product or the service or the thing they want to offer, and they don't recognize the path they have to be on and the personal growth journey they have to be on as they build a thriving business. So when you start a company, you're not just building a product, you're building a business. And all the things that come along with that are going to be important for you to master and to be able to adapt as you go. So recognize that and find good. Find good mentors and other helpmates to help you through that journey.

What would you caution them against?

I would caution anyone starting a company against believing the meme that's in Life right now about the Mark Zuckerbergs or even the Jeff Bezos, as in, like, oh, it's so easy for them. And they were on this just, like, direct path towards success. Recognize it's a lot of hard work. It's a lot of unglamorous hard work. So don't buy into the sort of Silicon Valley, we're crushing it kind of mentality, and don't get distracted by a lot of the hype around startups. Focus on what you want to do and what you want to build, and that will help guide you.

Let's talk about the scripts. Yes, the scripts in the appendix of your book. What made you decide to include them?

When I'm talking with my clients, I will, you know, they'll say, I'm not sure what to do about this. And I'll say, well, how come you just don't say? And then I'll say what they should say. And then I see them writing it down furiously and I say, oh, do you want to record this? He said, no, no, just say it again. Okay. So then I say, right. So I say it again. And it dawned on me after years of this happening, that these scripts were actually extremely useful for people. And so as I was writing the book, it just occurred to me, people like scripts and they find them very helpful. And so I'm going to put some in the back that my clients have found very helpful.

Will you share a few with us?

Yes. So I'm going to give you. I'm going to share two scripts. These are two very common scripts that I think people find very helpful. The first is giving difficult feedback to people. People hate that. And the leaders I coach say, how do I hold people accountable? What, am I supposed to fire them? And I'm like, no, no, no. There's like a lot of different ways to hold people accountable. But first of all, what discussion have you had with them already? You know, have you set clear goals? Yeah. You set clear goals. Okay, good. So what have you already told them? Well, they should know that I'm like, well, no, no, they probably don't know because that's where we're having this conversation. What have you already told them? And it turns out they haven't shared any feedback with him. With them, because. And I understand that it's really difficult to give feedback.

Yeah, people avoid conflict almost totally, more than anything.

Totally. And not even conflict, even just straight talk. And so I am going to share this script and I want to talk about a concept that I use regularly, which is called labeling. So first of all, this is not a bad person, but we're just going to label a few things to call them out. So we're going to make some observations here. That's first of all. And second is I'm going to give difficult feedback, but I'm going to get into it with what I call an emotional payment. As in, you are not a problem. And also I. And you add a lot to the table. But there are some things that we need to work that you need to work on. The reason I think it's important to make that emotional payment is because you want to signal good intent. And if you've not been giving them positive feedback for the past couple of years, you might really need to signal good intent right here and right now. So I'm going to give that as context. I want to distinguish this also from the so called feedback sandwich. Have you heard of the feedback sandwich? What people think about as the feedback sandwich is you tell people something good, then you tell them what you really want to tell them and then you tell them something good to soften the blow. I do not encourage that. Do not do that. However, you do need to signal good intent. And if you haven't done that regularly, let's start off by giving the positive so the person understands where you're coming from.

Why do you recommend not giving a feedback sandwich? It sounds like the big difference between what you're going to share with us and a feedback sandwich is that you don't come back to the bottom half of the sandwich.

Bread. Yeah. The problem with the feedback sandwich is its technique. It's not coming from a philosophy, it's just a technique like how do I give someone feedback while you tell them something good, then you tell them something bad, then you tell them something good. Well, that's like coming. There's no depth to that. Also, people see through it, so it's not, it doesn't land in the way that you're hoping for it to land. So I think it's almost a spiritual difference. What I'm asking you to do is not give a feedback sandwich. I'm asking you to actually think about for yourself all the good things this person does bring to the table so that when you have the conversation, your tone is connoting the approval, those good things also so that your employee understands that you're coming from a place of wanting to be helpful to them and appreciating what they bring to the table. So I think it's just a. It's a difference of Almost like philosophy and depth. So I'm going to ask you all to really think about what does this person do? Well, because you're going to start with that and also you want to bring that to the conversation as you have a difficult feedback. Is that helpful?

Absolutely.

Okay, great. So I'm going to get right into it. Debbie, I wanted to talk to you today because I've noticed a few things that I think we should address. First of all, I appreciate everything you do. I know you're one of the hardest workers here and your sense of humor brings everyone up. That's great. That said, I want to make sure you're getting great results with all your work. What I often see from you is a number of projects, a lot of activity, but I often see the projects are delayed and remain unfinished. Also, you don't always let everyone know about the delays, so they come as a surprise. That's a problem for your co workers who are counting on you to do what you say you'll do. Then other things get delayed waiting on you. I'm sure you have your reasons. Things are not perfect here. Maybe you're waiting on other people, but I expect you as a leader here to work constructively with your peers to fix process problems as they come up and to raise flags early if things will be late. I also expect you to make sure that you're communicating regularly with your peers and all the things you guys are working on jointly. I know you're super talented and you have much to contribute to our company. I want your efforts to have the right impact and I want you to be able to move forward in your career. That's why I'm working on this with you. We can discuss some of this right now and I'd love you to think about this and come back to me in three or four days with what you see as the problems and how you propose to fix them. What day should we plan to sync up again so you can share your plan with me and let me know what help you need from me?

So do you recommend that that's something that be said face to face or should that be in an email? Could that be in an email?

I really prefer face to face or these days video. It's important to have the conversation because they're going to have a response. When I write these scripts, by the way, obviously you're going to tailor it to your own circumstances, but also they might interrupt you. That's okay. Yeah, you're trying to get your mouth around the words. Also, you're Trying to get your mindset right. And so practicing it is very helpful. Having a script to practice it is very helpful. But once you've, you know, sort of thought through what you want to say when and if they interrupt you, and also share their point of view, which you certainly want to hear, it'll help you listen to them and not worry about you getting you through your message.

What happens when somebody responds defensively?

Mmm, I know. I have a script for that on my website, actually, when someone responds defensively. So first of all, I think it's important to step back and remind them, I'm only sharing this with you because I care about you and your success. Also, that's where labeling comes in, too. Listen, I see that you're having kind of an emotional reaction. I understand that. I don't like getting difficult feedback either. So let me just see if we can calm down for a second and we might need a minute. The other thing you can do when someone acts defensively is you can just be quiet and you can also say, listen, I don't want to upset you. Tell me more about how this is landing for you. By the way, I just did this with a client the other day. I was giving him the feedback and he got super explosive with me, quite defensive. And so I just let him talk and let him talk and let him talk. By the way, we think coaches don't take it personally. I take it personally.

You're a person. Why would you take. I take everything personally. I'm a person.

Yeah, but I let him vent and vent and vent and vent and vent. And then I said, I see that I touched a nerve here, which I think was accurate. I was just labeling that. And also what I said to him was, I really didn't mean to upset you. That's not why I brought this up. Tell me more about what's coming up for you or what's going on with you. And as a leader, you can say that too. And you can do you know, this is another woo woo term in coaching. We say holding space. You can hold space for somebody to have a difficult and emotional reaction. And that can go on for five minutes or 10 minutes and it's not their final answer. And also, you don't have to take it personally. You can get to a place where you realize they're having an emotional reaction, let them talk it out and it's not going to hurt you. And now you can together explore that emotional reaction that they've just had. And it can be actually enormously healing. And in the case of the person I was just mentioning, he got upset, he had this emotional reaction. And then we got through it and he calmed down and said, I really understand what you're saying and I want to think more about it. I said, that's great, why don't you think more about it? And then we had a follow up conversation and he came to the table with a lot more sophisticated commentary on what was going on. And I think that leaders get alarmed and shut down themselves by someone else's defensiveness. And I would say a lot of people have a defensive reaction at first before they have a more, let's say, enlightened reaction.

You included one story, one anecdote with a client that left the room. He was so aghast by what you said and you didn't know what to do. You're just sitting there kind of like, should I leave? Should I stay? Eventually, 45 minutes, he comes back in a completely different mood and says, you're right. I spoke to my wife, she said that I do all of those things.

That's right. I love that story. Yeah, that's right.

Share one more script with us.

Okay, I'm going to share one more script. This is going to be a simple script and I think that people don't think enough about this. So as a manager, one of your roles is to do career development with your people. And I think that managers and startups definitely don't think about that. And also they think they may not have something to add because, like, you know, I'm in marketing and that person's in product management or whatever. So this is a very short and simple script that you can bring up to your people three, four times a year, which is about their career development. Debbie. Debbie, I think it's a good idea to sit down regularly and talk about your career development. Let's do that a few times a year so I know what you want to do and I can help you achieve these goals. And that's it. Now here's. I have some questions. I'm going to give you a few questions you can ask. You can ask, what parts of your job right now do you like the most and what parts do you like the least? Has anything about your career aspirations or goals changed since the last time we talked? What are you doing now that points you in the direction of what you think you'd like to do? What kinds of training or experiences do you need to get there? And then on and on and on. There's a number of other questions in the book but you will see that actually your job as a manager is to ask a bunch of thought provoking questions. If they can't answer them, that's okay. You'll talk again in three, four months, it's fine. But let them receive that you care about their career development. And then when people say, what's she like as a manager? Does she care about your career? They'll say, yes, she does. And that will be amazing for them and for you.

One of the things that I like very much about that script, I didn't know you were gonna read that one. Is that that's also something that reading the book can do self directively. You can answer those questions for yourself as a way to sort of gauge how you're feeling about what you're doing and how satisfied you may or may not be.

Yes. So true. That's right.

I have one last question for you, Alyssa. You start the book with a question that you sort of leave us hanging with throughout the entirety of your book and don't answer until the end. And so, spoiler alert for anybody that might be listening that doesn't want to know the answer to the question, I'm going to ask it. Hope you'll answer. Should startups have a ping pong table in the office? And if so, why.

The age old ping pong question? Here we go. Well, like any good coach, I'm going to say, well, it depends. No fair. I know. I want to talk. So I wanted to say briefly that when you're building culture in your company, you've got to think about what kind of company do you want to build, what kind of people do you want to be in that company? Let's hire those people now, let's train them, let's onboard them, right? Let's give them training and let's communicate, indoctrinate them into that culture. And now you probably want to have a place as part of that culture. People feel cared about. So do the things that you need to do to make people feel cared about. Ask them about themselves, get to know them, try to, you know, commiserate with their troubles and give them positive feedback for when they're doing a good job. And at the end of all that, you can think about a few perks that you want to give your people. And if one of them is ping pong, God bless.

Eliza Cohen, thank you so much for putting so much important work in the world, for helping so many people become better at who they want to be. And thank you for joining me today on Designer Debbie.

It has been an honor to be here with you and thank you so much for the work that you put into the world and everything that you do. It's amazing and this has been a joy to be here.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Alyssa Cohn's brand new book is titled From Startup to Grown Up. Grow youw Leadership to Grow youw Business. To find out more about Alyssa Cohn and all of her extraordinary coaching work, go to alyssacohn.com that's a link is a c o h n dot com this is the 17th year we've been podcasting Design Matters and I'd like to thank you for listening. And remember, we can talk about making a difference. We can make a difference or we can do both. I'm Debbie Melman and I look forward to talking with you again soon.

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