Unlocking Founder CEO Potential - Noah Shanok - Stitcher - Episode #70

Lot of farmers that I talk to don't realize that they need to prioritize themselves for the warmer on and they also need to prioritize themselves that are vacant.

In the near term.

Welcome to Not Another CEO Podcast. I'm your host, David Pilidas. Every week we talk to inspiring leaders and get the true stories, the ups and downs, the lessons learned, and come away with actionable advice for our own journeys.

Today's guest is Noah Shannock, the founder and former CEO of Stitcher. Long before podcasts became the cultural force they are today, Noah and his team built one of the most recognizable podcast platforms in the world. It's not an exaggeration to say that Noah helped shape the modern podcasting landscape. Stitcher was ultimately acquired by Sirius XM for $325 million. After Stitcher, Noah went to Amazon and led the team that built out programs helping founders and nascent companies leverage aws. Now he's dedicated himself to helping the next generation of founders and CEOs learn from his experiences through coaching. Please welcome Noah Shannock.

Thank you. Thanks so much for having me, Darryl.

I'm excited to do this. I know we've done a couple calls leading up to this and I'm really excited to get this out into the world in this conversation. So first question, what is the one thing that you did at Stitcher, big or small, that had the biggest impact and you do again. If you're CEO of another company in.

The future, I would hire a jack of all trades, like a do anything.

Athlete and I would do it as early as humanly possible. So if someone want a couple years.

Out of school at the later stages.

This role turns into several different roles like chief of staff and EA and office manager and head of strategy and finance.

But in the beginning you just need.

A smart person who can get shit done and that allows me as the CEO to focus on the highest average things.

So I agree with that statement and I tell people the same thing. And the next question people ask me, which is what I'll ask you, is how do you find that person?

Yeah, so I, I had tried an ea, which, which didn't. Which wasn't what I needed. And I think I just tried posting a few different things. And it was about a year into Stitcher that I hired Eve Peters, who.

Was a couple years out of Stanford and had started a company that had failed and she just wanted some more.

Startup experience before starting her next company.

And so she, she did everything from helping me with like board decks and investor emails to Ordering things to the office. And the best part was when she was ready to leave and start another company, which she did.

Her last task was to your place or say.

And how many, over a period of how long were you running Citrus?

Eight years or eight years. And, and we had three and they were all awesome. So we had Edith Peters and then we had Danielle Novi and then we.

Had Janet Meacher and they were all really awesome.

And obviously like, as you grow, the world changes a little bit.

And we, we were also able to offset some of the load with like, you know, ahead of finance and the kind of strategy, that kind of thing. But it was the highest leverage thing thing for me. I, I see founders hold on to low leverage tasks like weighing too long.

Like they're, they're doing their rippling, they're ordering computers, new employees, they're like booking travel, they're ordering swag. They shouldn't be doing those things in the first place. The, the only thing that matters obviously.

In the early days is finding product market fit.

And the only way you can do.

That is by building stuff and talking to customers. And if you're not doing one of those two things and you're, you're wasting your time.

I, I remember early days of Better Cloud. I remember I was ordering the snacks for the office from Fresh Direct.

We all were.

And I was taking it so seriously, you know, and it was, but I was doing it at 11 at night and I'm, and I'm like, if I don't order it, it's not going to, we're not going to have snacks. And I, I remember going through that and someone said to me, how stupid. Like, why are you spitting your time doing this? You know, and, and there was, there was so many things like that. I mean, finding office space, it is important. I mean, but it's so time consuming. And I had a jack of all trades, Eli, and I said, hey, can you help us find office space? He said, well, I've never found office space before. I said it's not that difficult. And he just went out onto the streets of New York and just literally went into office buildings and asked if his, if they have office space, no broker, no nothing, and found us office space, you know, and you realize, I think to that point, if you have the right person, they can do probably also more than you think they can do.

Yeah, the person has got to be.

Super high with power and, and see the comp context.

Like the more they're in the fold.

With you, the better. But that's Right. They can do much more than you would expect.

What do you think is the number one attribute? Like, if you could only choose one attribute for that person, for people listening, I'm going to go hire this person. You guys convinced me. What is the number one attribute that you would look for?

I want to answer the question with two answers because they're both sort of equal. The first is horsepower. They just have to be like, super smart. And the second is they're willing to do anything.

So they, they're humble, they roll up their sleeves, and we're willing to do whatever it takes, including, like ordering snacks for the office at 11pm so let's.

Continue on the people front. And so you, you know, you built that team, you built a Stitcher team. You then end up at Amazon and they have obviously a lot more structure to how they do interviewing, how they do hiring, all of that. Can you give me some things that you learn? I've never worked at a huge company like an Amazon, and I'm very curious, like, how that differed, you know, those two experiences when you, when you really think about the people side of things and finding people.

Yeah, I actually thought that I was.

Pretty good at hiring when I got to Amazon, and it turns out, like, I didn't actually know that much.

So for, for context, in the early days of Stitcher, we did what I like to call vibe hiring, which I see a lot. The hiring manager would meet with the person and then if they like them based on some vibes and some loose.

Questions, they'd like, pass them to the next person who would also interview them based on vibes.

And there, there. So there was like literal or no.

Structure to our process.

And it was also like the furthest thing from objective. And we made some pretty big mistakes.

By hiring likable people who are like us.

And I realized we needed to fix it, but I didn't know how. So I just, I read this book called who, which is a great book.

And just had everybody read it and started implementing some processes from the, from the book.

And that made us better. At least we had structure and some objective metrics that we were trying to.

Measure these people against.

But. But nobody taught me how to hire.

Effectively or run a process until I got to Amazon.

So I get to Amazon, which is.

Which is famous for their hiring process, and I learned a ton.

So at Amazon, once a candidate gets to the final round interview, then it's.

100% down whether or not we're the cultural. The right cultural fit for Amazon.

So Amazon's culture is codified by their leadership principles.

It's the North Star for everything for hiring, performance, management.

People talk using the lingo pretty much every day. And you've heard of some of these things like customer obsession and bias for action.

This is what's important to Amazon, is that are you a fit for their culture?

So the final round interview is there's.

Five people in the file now in every day.

And it's basically like, it's pretty intense. It's like back to back, one on one interviewing. And each person interviewing is responsible for.

Two or three evolutions.

So let's say I'm assessing on customer obsession and I'm interviewing you. I said, you know, I'll say something like, David, tell me about a time.

In your past where you've worked at works from the customer and I'll go.

Deep on your story and.

Assess whether.

Or not it's true customer obsession in the way that we view it. So before you interview somebody at Amazon.

And I interviewed hundreds of people by.

The time I got to Amazon, you.

Shadow an experienced interviewer and then as.

You progress somebody experience shadows you.

And.

One of the keys to the Amazon interview process is one person in the final round.

Interview day is called a bar raiser.

And people have heard of the sort.

Of mystique bar raiser thing.

The job of the bar raiser, the bar raiser is not in the group that's hiring. And the job of the bar raiser is to make sure that the person.

Hired is better than 50% of the.

People that are already in route. And that person is a super experienced interviewer and they manage the debrief for.

The interview with all of the people.

That interviewed the person and they can basically veto the hiring manager because the.

Hiring manager's job is to get butts.

And seats and they're under pressure to get butts and seats. And the bar raiser's job is to.

Make sure the bots are like the right ones.

And so I became a bar raiser at Amazon. I so I've helped hire hundreds of people in Amazon and if I started another company, I would implement a very light version of Amazon's process and I.

Will do it very, very early.

The thing that you said, there's many things in there that are useful to people listening. The one thing I'm going to call out that I have not heard of before actually is shadowing the experienced interviewer. That is a good because that even the smallest company, someone could shadow the founder or the CEO doing the interview. You know, and start to walk. That is a, that's such a simple one that, that's a. That's really powerful because I say it all the time. And I've been writing recently on the sub stack about this is. Very few people ever get trained on how to interview. Almost nobody. And you're thrown in and you just copy what people did when they interviewed you. And if you, if you didn't go through a good interview process, it just compounds on top of itself and continues. But the shadowing someone else, it's also, I guess, a way for you to, to expand the pool of people you trust to interview. Because that's the other challenge from a time perspective, you really don't have enough hours in the day to interview.

That's the thing. And the good ones, you'll say your feedback whether you're inclined to hire the.

Person or not at the same time.

And so nobody can be swayed by the other person. And you do that in the debrief as well. You can't see anybody else's feedback until.

You'Ve entered your own feedback and you've given a thumbs up or a thumbs, thumbs down. Because people are really swayed obviously by, by other people.

And what's amazing is not only watching an experienced interviewer interview, it's what is when you're talking to them after the.

Interview process, it's what they saw that may not be apparent to a less experienced interviewer in the, in the interview. It's pretty amazing.

Yeah, I think doing. I like taking that lightweight, a lightweight version of Amazon structure and putting that in early stage. Every company I've been a part of would have saved millions of, I would say easily millions of dollars and maybe more importantly just many months of time, you know, or years, I don't know, combined. Hiring the wrong people, doing bad interviews, all of that.

Yeah, we, we definitely would have saved.

A lot of money if we were better at it.

Yeah. So I want to transition a little bit. I mean, one of the things I think when I, when I researched the background on Stitcher and all the things, I mean, I remember, you know, those, the heyday of Stitcher, everyone had heard of it. If you liked podcast back then and you did some pretty cool business development deals during that period of time. Can you talk about some of those early days and, and some of those deals that you did? Because I, I want to get into how you got there for, you know, for a company that was no. 1, you know, for, for at that time, but you got some crazy deals done. Can we talk a little bit about what those deals looked like.

Yeah, so, so Stitcher was, was a podcast platform, obviously. And, and so there were, there were basically two types of, of deals that we did that were really interesting and.

Sort of worth talking about.

The first was deals with media companies.

And the second was deals with car manufacturers.

So I'll talk about the media companies first. So these media companies were, you know, companies like NPR and Fox News that we were using their content in our podcast player and they were podcast RSS feeds, but we would repurpose them to stream them. And so it was a gray area whether or not we were allowed to actually use them. And so the deals were a little bit sensitive because we could, they could.

Shut us off at any time or send us a cease and desist.

And so we made the decision to get some traction first and then go try to get the deals. And once we had some traction, I basically brought on an advisor to help us with the deals. And we were lucky.

One of our investors was a guy.

Named Will Wild, and he had a.

Ton of media company experience. He'd been a VP at several of.

Them and he knew most of the.

Folks we needed to talk to.

And so I structured a deal with him where he would get cash and.

Equity for each of the deals that he helped us close that we needed to get done. And that worked amazingly well.

He helped us with the pitch. He would walk us in. It was a much friendlier meeting as a result of the fact that he knew them. Then he would get the back channel on what they actually needed. And so that worked really well. The automotive company deals were free, interesting.

In terms of, were like more of.

A story about luck and, and, and perseverance.

So we're, we're basically, this was like 2008 and we were basically waiting for.

An owner manufacturer to come out with an Internet connection directly into the head unit of the car. We viewed ourselves as the modern day replacement for talk radio.

And for us, the car was really the holy grail. And so we paid close attention to.

The auto manufacturers and you know what they were doing the head unit.

And one of our investors got wind.

That form was working on something in.

Their, in their console and we didn't.

Have any connections there. And I just went bance, like, I.

Just, I, I stalked people. I, you know, made like four or charts of who we needed to talk to. I like went, you know, crazy on LinkedIn. I pulled in every, like, I basically pulled out every favor I could to.

Try to get the right introductions there.

And as a result we were introduced.

So it was a high profile announcement. It was the first announcement by a car manufacturer. It was announced by Ford CEO at the Consumer Electronics show in Vegas.

And it was basically the announcement was.

Was us stitcher and Pandora directly into the head unit.

And after we got that deal the rest of them just like came to us.

I thought we were going to have to continue to hunt but it result.

It was a lot easier but getting that first deal was really hard. We didn't have a lot of growth then and to go raise a like.

A series B next round funding.

And I asked for permission to have the software early if I would buy.

Like I bought a full infusion car.

And I got the software which is Super Barney like 2 years early and I named the car Mrs. B for B round funding. And we had so little cash at the time that I think I put.

It like I put the car on my credit card or I finance it myself or what have you.

And I would just drive this car.

Down to Sandville Road and I would, you know, I would do the pitch and then I would get to the slime where the, you know, the, the, the CEO of Ford is, is, is announcing us. And I would say, you know, I was so inspired by this that I actually have, I bought, I bought this.

Car so I could show them the sweet turf radio. And it worked about one third of the time. And so I stood into it. I got to the point where if the meeting was going really well, I actually wouldn't take them out to their home car. So I didn't take Benchmark out to the car.

I didn't drop Benchmark about the car.

Because I was like the meetings go out too, too well.

Like it's, it's.

I'm gonna like, you know, it might, it might get messed up. But it was, it was pretty amazing to as a, it was like the best fundraising prop ever and it was pretty amazing to, to, to show kind of what our vision of the future.

Of radio was was, was there.

Just out of curiosity, why would it not go well?

You literally like didn't work half the time. I mean we're still, I mean even when I went to production it didn't work that well. But, but like in the early it was so buggy and like, you know, first you need the, the Internet connection works through, through your phone. So the Internet connection in the phone had to be good. I had to like sync with this, this sort of Kludic device. Then there was an audio part of it so we have to understand what was said and it just didn't work.

I both lessons though, both of those are good lessons. I think the one with the media company one is a lesson that actually I have a company that I work with that's going through something like this where they originally thought we have to hire someone who knows this space to get into this space. And then they actually realized they got an advisor. In your case it was an investor in their case advisor. But really they just needed to be walked in the door. It wasn't that they needed a full time person to do the work, it's. It was really just having the credibility to walk in the door when once you're in the door you can work those deals. I think, I mean is that kind of what happened in that, in that situation?

Yeah, that's exactly what happened. And, and he, he was, Will was good enough that he was able to coach us, you know, on our pitch. He coached us beforehand. He knew what they knew wanted to hear, he knew what they were concerned about. And then, you know, and then he was in the room with us. And the fact that he had the relationships also helped for the back channel after. But that, that's right. We basically needed to get walked in the door and we needed to understand their perspective. And it was a lot easier for.

Us to you know, kind of buy.

Cliff nodes and relationships in order in order to get us there. I think eventually we could have probably gotten there on our own, but it was. The deals were too sensitive and if one of those folks shot us off it would have been a problem, especially.

For the ones that were more popular on Sketcher.

But I highly recommend that.

I recommend that to clients all the time when it's an industry that they don't know and they can just speed up the process by six months by bringing in somebody who's the nose hooker.

Top lineup on the Ford one. What ended up happening with that deal ultimately it sounds like it didn't work too well once it was out. What happened with that deal ultimately?

Well, I always thought that the Internet radio would replace.

The satellite radio and AM FM directly into the head unit like that. There would be these. And actually I had.

I remember I had a meeting with.

Like the CEO and a bunch of people from SiriusXM. The guy who was running SiriusXM at the time was. It was a character, his name was Mel Konzib.

And he walked into the room and all his like hench people were there.

And it was pretty awkward already because we're you know, we're competitors and literally.

The first thing he said, he would say hello. He's like, why don't you die?

That's what he said.

And I was like, why don't you die already? Like you're, we're the future of radio. And I, I, I was wrong. At least I was wrong on the timing. It needs to be as easy to use as possible. Now everybody listens to a podcast in their car and most people I think don't. But, but AM and FM radio are still a big thing. They're still, you know, they advertise like it just didn't go away fast enough. And Sirius XM is a huge business and still printing money. And I think people really like convenience and.

They like this direct into the car thing.

And so I was just wrong on the topic.

And so to answer the question about Ford specifically, these head unit deals where Stitcher and Pandora and others were like.

Kind of preloaded into the head unit.

They turned out to just be more.

Kludgy than having your phone and just have an AVRCP Bluetooth connection. And CarPlay also helped a lot because CarPlay made it easier or for the apps to just get up.

So it just, it wasn't Forbes fall specifically but it helped us a ton.

In those early days because the optics.

Of it was really, that it was.

The future of radio and it was a very, very high profile deal with the public company.

I think that that last part is. So that's the la, that's I, we've all been through these like big strategics. In this case the car manufacturers, in other cases, you know, the big distribute, whatever it is, the big strategic companies saying hey, this new startup, they have a cool thing, looks really cool. Let's, let's OEM it, let's embed it, let's resell it, let's do something with it. And what you just said I think is, is so spot on, which is it gives you the credibility, it helped you t tell the story. It didn't necessarily translate to revenue per se, maybe in through other ways and maybe translated to fundraising. But I see this all the time also another one, right? I'm sure you've worked with hundreds of founders. Like, you know, you have someone like no, no, no, I'm telling you, I'm telling you this is the big company. They're going to, they're going to change the trajectory of I'm going to get embedded and they're going to sell it to everyone. And then you do two years of Negotiation and contracts and this and then you go to actually go live and it's kind of crickets.

Yeah.

I think you're not the only, I guess what I'm saying is you're not the only person who kind of goes through that. The question is, can you leverage. You said it so perfectly. It's like, can you leverage that into other things and credibility and you know, other types of business? But to expect that. That's the thing. Sometimes it is, but 95% it's not.

Yeah, we expected it would be the thing and, and, but it was, it became an amazing calling card for us. And they, and another quantity story is we went out after the ces, we.

Went out to dare like our team and their, their team and the CTO.

Of all of Ford and order company was, was, was there and he was asking one of our engineers like how many engineers are there on the team? And you, and you. And our guy said like seven. And so he, he was like, oh, there's seven people on your head. You're a team. And he's like, no, I mean there's seven total engineers and stitcher and this guy just went ghost white.

Good stories.

So, so you, you have, you've had your own experience. Founder, CEO. You have through the Amazon experience, you spend time with a lot of people. I mean I think when we were talking about it, literally you said it's over 100 people that you have founder, CEOs that you've worked with and advised and helped in some way, shape or form. And now you do this as this is what you do. You coach people, you advise founders and CEOs. Can you talk about when you work with a founder, when you start engaging with someone, when you start working with a CEO, what are the top 1, 2, 3, 4 things that you.

You help them with, you spend time with, you. You see that they are most, let's call it suboptimized on like what are those top things?

So I Coach mostly founder CEOs and they're, they usually come to me when.

They'Re transitioning from a small team where they're the CEO, but they're mostly like a contributor and now they have to become a leader.

And that usually comes around series a.

Maybe it's 20 to 30 employees. They have some version of product market fit and they're and they're trying to.

Scale themselves and those challenges usually show.

Up in some version of the following.

Three things warrant is they're pulled in.

Too many directions and not doing anything well.

The stepping is that they're lacking confidence.

Or have imposter syndrome and it's causing them to not act decisively enough or, and, or, and oftentimes it's all three. They're burned out and not taking care of themselves and have a. In a long time.

And there's many other sort of current mutations of those and many other reasons.

Why a founder CEO might find me, but those tend to be the things.

And those three things being pulled in too many directions. The imposter syndrome, having a hard time making decisions, being burnt out. Are those all things that you experienced in your journey?

Oh yeah, 100% yeah.

And what, what can you give me some examples of when you were running Stitcher? Like how did those things manifest themselves? When did they occur? You know, I think you said something there about the stages and it's one of the things I think the, the founders CEOs that don't.

Make it a lot of times are the ones that cannot scale as the company scales and they feel like I am still going to be at this making all the decisions. I'm going to be in the weeds on everything. I'm going to have everyone coming to me. I'm going to. And so anyway, can you talk maybe about your experiences there?

Yeah, I'll start with the burnout one.

Because that, that one, I, I made some really big mistakes and I've actually been doing a, a talk for.

Quite.

A few years now, which is kind.

Of a passion talk talk of mine about my own experience, kind of like burning out by the second year of Stitcher and then, and then having to.

Kind of rebuild the plane while, while.

I was flying it.

So and, and appealing to founders to.

That basically prioritizing themselves is actually prioritizing their startup rather than sacrificing themselves at the altar of the startup. Which is, which is what we all think I thought you needed to do.

So the first year or two of Stitcher I worked.

I was not married at the time, didn't have kids. I worked a hundred plus hour weeks. I took a ton of stimulants and I slept like four hours a night.

I felt like Stitcher was the center.

Of the universe to me.

Every failure or misstep felt deeply personal. And I also thought that I didn't have anybody really to talk to about it be because obviously it's a very lonely job. You can't talk to your employees.

You can't in some cases even talk to your co founder. You know, your girlfriend or partner doesn't want to hear about it. And, and, and so it's, yeah, it's a, it's incredibly lonely.

So my sleep deprivation was really bad and it was so bad that one of my wake up calls was we had to raise a series A in.

2008 which was not a particularly good time to raise money. And in addition to that.

Every investor.

We talked to either lost money on.

Podcasts or lost more on mobile or both. And so I pitched literally every investor in Silicon Valley.

I pitched Harvard plus investors, everybody. So I start pitching folks on the.

East coast and we're like this close.

To a term sheet.

And the last milestone was I was.

Just supposed to talk, I was supposed to have breakfast with one of their entrepreneurs and residents and who have run an ad supported business. Stitches and ad supported business.

And so it was a particularly bad sleep week for me and I, I.

Sort of, I did what I always did before meetings like that. I just took a ton of Cassie.

Showed up to this meeting and I literally could not do simple math. Like we were talking about the ad.

Business and the model and I like, I was not making, I wasn't making sense. And so we did not get that term sheet. And it was a big wake up call for me because I thought to.

Myself, I can't get through a meeting like this. How can I be making the decisions.

That I need to make to, to, to run a company effectively?

And so I started taking that really seriously.

So I, I, I changed my sleep habits a lot. I always been good at, you know, kind of exercise, but I made sure I was doing that. I stopped consuming bad things. I started consuming like mostly, mostly big things.

And then I started doing some, some.

Some other things like I joining a.

CEO group that, where we would talk.

Privately like, similar to like a, a wacio group. I started writing like gratitude lists. I started doing things that kind of got me out of the, the, the, the context of my situation and it made a really fundamental different.

So, so contrast that experience in our.

Series A, our series B, which we, we, we didn't have nearly as much growth. I slept for eight hours the night before department meeting had benchmark.

I went for a run in the morning.

I did some meditating. And I'm not saying that there weren't other contributing factors, but I showed up to that meeting in a very, very different way. Did during series A founders I talked to a lot of farmers that I talked to don't realize that they need to prioritize themselves for the warmer on and they also need to prioritize themselves that are vacant Things in, in the, in the near term.

How long, how long from that series, a moment or that realization to turning things like was that an immediate thing that you did, that, that, or was that over a period of six months, a year? Did you have someone help you go through that?

I wish I could say it was.

Like, you know, the next day I.

Fixed everything, but it was, it was.

A slow, it was a slow process. You know, change takes, takes time and I was, it took me a while to sort of realize that and rationalize it.

I did have some help from some from the CEO group that I was in.

I think some of them had kind of recognized that and some of them hadn't. And we looked at the ones who had recognized it and it seemed a.

Lot better than we were.

So that helped.

And the more I did it and.

Kind of invested in it, the more I recognized that I was making better decisions, I was showing up the right way.

It took a while though.

I have for a personal question. People who know me well know that I don't sleep well still to this day. And like my email gives me anxiety. Like if I have any emails in my inbox, I can't go to sleep. And are there any tips? Seriously, like are there any tips that you have to, to be able to fully sleep through the night while running a company? Like I, I have not ever been able to do it. So I'm curious like what that number one for me, like what, what, what did you do there?

Oh, I learned I have a ton of tips.

I actually I ended up going so.

Deep on, on sort of sleep processes because it was, it took me such.

It took me a while to like.

Pick, fix my sleep.

So I'll give kind of the low hanging fruit and then, and then, and then I'm happy to do a sleep session with you. I want to see you sleeping, sleeping well. So there's, there's a set of sort of sleep hygiene thing that things that.

Are sort of well, well well known.

Which is no screens an hour before bed. Your, your body. A screen tricks your body into thinking that it's daytime. And so even if you think that you're just zoning out on like Instagram, you're, you're making your body think that it's actually daytime and you need a like a wind down period. You, you, you, you, you need your.

Body to, to, to go offline and sort of decompress and have a long wind down period.

No caffeine after 3pm, no alcohol. It makes, it makes the quality of your Sleep worse. A lot of people drink before to help them go to sleep. But the quality of your sleep is much worse.

Your run cycle is much shorter and you end up waking up because you have to go to the bathroom more than need to.

Your room should be cool and dark and same wake time every morning. This is really hard for me. Like no matter what weekend, weekdays, same wake time. Your body's a clock.

Your body wants the same wake time every morning.

And then for you, who would be anxious about your email in the middle of the night and might check it, you leave your phone outside of your vendor.

You don't bring a phone into your bedroom.

And if you're one of those people.

That'S anxious about getting an emergency call.

Like I was, then you have an.

Emergency bypass on for your loved ones. You put it very loud and you put the phone in that type of door. You do not check in, you do not look at your phone. You say good night to your phone.

Those things will help 80% of people.

And then I got some more or follow up.

That, that's really helpful. I, I, yeah, that's really helpful. And to me, the part about the CEO, we, we just did a dinner with a bunch of CEOs actually here in my apartment. And the whole thing was about CEO support systems. It was about other CEOs, it was about coaches, advisors, therapists, all the different people kind of that you need to surround yourself with as a CEO. And when you talk about this example, you know, I think.

Is so powerful to have those other people to lean on because not that many people really know what it's like to be in that seat. And so I, I like that. I'm curious about the imposter syndrome. The imposter syndrome is something that I would say every, I don't want to say every, but I want to say 99% of founder CEOs that I meet with have imposter syndrome. And when you get going on it, I'm like, I have imposter syndrome. They haven't. You know, we're, we're kind of going back and forth and I talked to someone the other day, sold a company for multiple billions. They had imposter syndrome, had to start another company to prove it wasn't a fluke. Like literally that's what they said they told me and I believe them. And I'm curious from that perspective how it manifested for you and, or how you help people with that, because.

I think it's pretty deep seated, you know.

So I, I'll talk About how I coach Ari first, because I, I think I have done a better job coaching.

Ari than for my, for myself. I think it just took, took me time. So.

And I'll talk more about the part of the hard thing about imposter syndrome.

Is what it leads to, which is not being confident enough to make the decisions that you need to make.

That's aside from ruining your day in your head.

The way that it manifests is by that not being decisive and confident decisions.

So I found that in most cases, the CEOs that I worked with and also myself, that they know, they actually know what they want to do. And it may not be entirely obvious.

To them at the beginning of the.

Section, but with a few questions like the path really reveals itself. And then it's just about the hard thing of doing the thing that you really intuitively know that you need to do, but you don't want to do, like letting the person go or pivoting away from something people have been slaving.

Over for a while, but it's just not working fast enough.

And so in my coaching, I help them get into the place and help them get to the answer themselves.

Sometimes I'll tell them the answer, but usually like they know the answer.

Most of the time they do know the answer and their gut gets stronger. I mean, you know this like your gut gets stronger over time as you.

Start to, to, to trust it.

And then.

Once they know what they need to do, then I'll, I'll help.

Them get into the mental place to actually do the thing because it becomes.

About doing the thing and I'll hold them accountable to it. And sometimes we may, if it's like I gotta let you, you go or what have you, we'll role play it.

In advance and just get to the place.

And then that's their homework. Their homework is like, they have to go do this, this, this, this, this hard thing. And I hold them accountable to that. Like they, like they're, they're, they're. And you know, Borgs hold CEOs accountable for output. So you can't really control out. I hold people accountable to input and those are the things you can control. And what I've seen, and this was the same for me, is that after a while when we start to be more decisive and you do the thing that you know you need to do, the imposter syndrome stuff starts to grow wet because you just like, this is the job. I'm actually like reasonably good at the job. I mean, for all the other thing is like a lot of folks who were founders.

Especially like the Y Combinator archetypes, they've been getting gold stars their whole lives. And all of a sudden you're going to do this thing where like if you get a 20 on a test, that's such a win.

So I think helping them to kind of reframe what success looks like and that you could, you know, that there's.

A lot of luck in it and.

That you can only control the input.

Metrics and you just have to make the right call with very little information. And, and, and, and, but it does. My own experience with it.

Is that it does get better over time. I'm curious your experience.

But yeah, I do think, I do think there's something about the reps where you have an idea or you want to do something. It takes you a long time to trust that that's the right thing to do. Then you do it and you see that that was the right thing. And if you do that enough times for yourself, you're kind of, you have to remind yourself sometimes. But you're like, I should let that person go. I'm not really sure, but you know, you should let them go. But you kind of. I was thinking about this the other day where I would like tell my wife, like I'm having this really big problem with this particular person. And by the ninth time of me telling her, she's like, well, I think you know the answer to what the, what this is. And then you would do it and for both sides of the equation, for both people, is probably the right thing to do. And if you do it enough times, I think you do start to trust that and yourself more because you see you're not always right, but you at least see that. It's like something about your gut, you know, And I, I tell, I think the part you said, which is this goes back to the CEO support system, which is a big topic right now for us with not another CEO, but the keeping holding them accountable.

And it's not like you're their board member. You can't fire them. You can't. But it almost doesn't matter. It's just them saying it out loud to a person who's going to then check on them doing that. That I can see that must be super powerful because they're not going to go to their board member probably and tell them, I think I need to fire this person because that creates a whole different dynamic. But they can have that conversation with you. You can then say, okay, you made that decision. Next time we talk, you know, I'm going to come back and ask you that. And just having some accountability makes a big difference.

Yeah, it, it, it makes it, it really does. And it's, it's a little bit like hiring a personal trainer, I guess. Like, you're investing in it. Like, you're like, the company is investing a lot of, like a good CEO coach is expensive. And, and, and so the company is.

Investing a lot of money in the CEOs growth.

And like.

Yes, you. So, so, so, like, you're on the hook. Like, you got to do what you agreed that you were going to do.

Otherwise, like, what's the point?

And I never actually had to do.

This, but I've threatened a couple times.

Like, if they don't do their homework, I'll fire them. Because I, I, like, I get energy.

From watching a person grow. Like, that's why I do this.

And if they're not doing it, we're talking about the same thing every time.

Then, like, what's the.

More.

Let'S go back for a second to Stitcher. What is the biggest challenge you ever faced at Stitcher and how did you overcome that?

Well.

The biggest challenge we never overcame, which was that we started a podcast.

Company in 2006, before podcasts were a thing.

And we basically had linear growth most.

Of the time, slow linear growth and a venture cost of capital.

And we were within months of running.

Out of cash on through separate occasions.

And my experience with Stitcher is a cautionary tale. Stitcher eventually sold to Sirius XM for $300.5 million.

But my investors and team and I didn't get rich from the sale and.

I, ironically, we sold stitcher V in.

2014, which was the year that podcast took off.

There was a podcast called Serial which became super popular. And that's what kind of podcasts were.

Like growing like this. And then as of 2014, they started growing like that.

But running a company with slow linear.

Growth for eight years with a venture pasta capital taught me a lot of things about all of our skills. So I got really good at raising money and hiring and retaining good talent and doing BD deals and basically grinding because we never had the, the wind.

In our backs and, and most importantly.

Managing the mental game, which was the hardest part for me.

So my experience with Stitcher and, and this is experience experience with any person.

Running any startup, as you know, is that it's extremely challenging. And the more time you're in the.

Hot seat, the more you learn.

I never learned. I will probably never learn as much as I did in the eight years that I was going to say.

The thing you said there about timing.

It goes back to. You said it before, like, luck. Luck does have a big, big part to do with this. I mean, there's some element of making your own luck, you know, to some, to some degree, but, but something like that. I mean, I love podcasts. And when Serial came out, of course, that was the, that was the change of the trajectory. And if you'd started the company four years later, you know, and raised money four years later, you would have been in the position to catch the wind and not, you know, it's like there's timing and market dynamics. And I was talking to someone earlier today and we were talking about like liquidity windows that happen in the macro market. Like, there's a lot of things that have to go your way. Even if you work 100 something hours a week and even if you put your entire life into it, even if you have the best product and the best team and the best, it's still sometimes not enough, actually.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's right. And I think Marc Andreessen said that.

It was like something like 80 or 90% luck.

And the rest was, was.

If, if.

You happen to catch it at the right time, that's what they're looking to make sure that the person is going to take the company as far as it can possibly go. But timing is a, timing a lot. Was a, is a, is a, is a really big partner.

I want to transition to your background. So did you always know that you were going to start a company? Were you always, as a child, were you. Did you know, I want to be an entrepreneur one day?

I think so. I, I grew up in New York City. As you know, our family was comfortable financially.

My dad was like a Wall street guy and taught me about business and markets. And you're always coming up with like little business ideas and trying to make them work and my mom was a.

Child psychologist and social entrepreneur and actually.

Became one of my entrepreneurial heroes when we were growing up. She started a school called the Heschel Schoon, which became an icon in New York and was one. She was the first president and one of the, the co founders.

And seeing through my childhood, watching this.

Little school kind of grow and we would have board meetings like in our, in our living room, like really late at night. And then seeing the impact that that's had and, and you know, everybody in New York now knows about the headboard. It's considered this amazing school. I, I, that, that was so inspirational for me.

So I think the exposure I've talked, you know, now this year, the 60 something, you know, CEO that I've talked to and the number of people who had exposure at a young age, not even I asked people was it like, did your parents say you're going to be an entrepreneur? And most people say no, it was just.

And some people say I didn't even really think about it until just now, but it's like some kind of osmosis, you know that you just there and you're seeing it and you're feeling it and you kind of, you don't even know what you're like in those board meetings. I can't even imagine the stuff that you were, that you were processing and hearing and, and, and so I, I find that so interesting and it really motivates me with my kids to expose them to everything that I can expose them to because I don't know what it's going to result in, but I feel like if they at least see it, something is sinking in, you know, totally.

And, and you, you definitely have to.

Develop.

And kind of an optimism because.

You got to be a little cocoa pus to startups especially. The odds are, you know, the odds are so low and you have these.

Ambitions that are so big that there has to be something in you I think that.

Kind of, that gives you the land too, growing to go to.

Have you had a, it sounds like your mom is probably your role model. Have you had a mentor? Did you have a mentor, a coach or somebody, advisor, someone who was helping you in those early days of Stitcher, the way you're helping people now?

I've, I've had, you know, many sort of folks I had looked up to, to, to some extent but I would say during the Stitcher time it was.

It was, it was my mom like she, she at that point had, you know, why I'm pretty, pretty significant organizations.

And she didn't, you know, I couldn't.

Ask her for advice on tech stuff but I asked her for a lot of advice on.

People dynamics and on leadership and very specific situations and she was an amazing.

What, what is it that drives you? What, what is it that gave you the, the.

That drive to go start a company and do this crazy journey and, and what, what is it that drives you?

I think I, I always wanted to build stuff. I, I, I don't, I don't know.

I don't know exactly where it came from. I think just watching, watching it When I was, I always wanted to build stuff. I was always interested in business.

And now you know, as a coach I look back and like everybody in.

My family was like either an entrepreneur, some form of business or a therapist.

And so I feel like maybe now I found my true calling like as I you know, kind of marry, married the two. But yeah, I always just had a.

Burning desire to build and also going to help people and that second part, I got to deal Warner.

On that note, a personal question because I've now spent the last couple of years advising companies and not building my own company per se, even though I'm starting to do that. Not another CEO, but not really.

And it's kind of an interesting challenge to go from an operator to coach, sideline person. How have you dealt with that? Have you ever had the feeling of going back and building again? Have you, you know, how did do you ever want to put your hand on the wheel for the people that you work with? Like for, for an operator? I, I find it difficult sometimes and I'm curious how, how you've, because you've been doing this for a while now for a lot of people. Many more than I've done it for. Like how, how do you deal with that?

I think especially with the AI tools.

And how easy it is to build things. I am more compelled to build now and more than I have been in a really long time.

I've always had itches to do little things but I'm more compelled to do.

It now and dural.

Sometimes wish I.

Could, you know, then a client will tell me about a situation and I wish I could just like parachute air and you know, be an operator for.

Like, you know, run the company or run the sales team or whatever for.

Like a week or two. I think it would be pretty, pretty, pretty awesome.

But I, but I also, I see.

How much it kind of wears on you and I'm at a different life stage. I'm you know, I've got a very young and growing family of like you know, two, two kids and another one on the way and I want, and I'm very, very gratified by my, my work and so one of my calls next year is going to be like.

You know, I'm going to time bound myself. I'm going to start you know, bowling a little bit but really time down.

Myself because I can just get super carried away with it.

You know.

The next thing I know I'm off to, I'm off every race is again I'll never want every stuff For a while.

I wonder how long you're going to sit on.

I know, I don't know.

I don't.

This is, this is why there's not another CO that keeps getting bigger and bigger in terms of my, my ambitions for it. Because I, I don't think I can you know, I want, I enjoy building also and I think I.

You know, I, I, I, I told people I, in the beginning I said I'll take like six months and then it was a year and then, then I started doing the advising and then, and then this, this definitely has taken on a life of its own in, in a great way. And I feel like this may be that thing, you know, this may be that next thing and, but figure out how to really structure that is, is but yeah, I can't, I don't think I can sit on the sideline for too long because it's.

The operating is fun. I, I find the operating fun I think and I think that anyway and building, building is fun and building is fun for the, the most interesting thing is just to have. I, I miss having a team. I tell everyone of everything. Of everything. I miss having a team. That's what I miss. I don't really even care what the product is at some level. Like I, I miss having a group of people that you're high fiving with and you're, you know, building and even the hard times when I talk to people I used to work with, it's like we talk about all the shitty times and remember those almost more fondly spend the best times, you know.

Yeah, I, I, I miss that. I miss that too. You know, something you said before about like the CEO sort of needing to.

Be surrounded by, by, by folks.

I, that struck me. I, you know, I raised a, a.

Bunch of money at the time. You know, $30 million over three ounce was like a lot of, a lot of money.

And they bet they, they never met.

Anybody else on the team before they invested in any of the three rounds.

And so they're betting all this money on a horse and, and, and at the time and it's still the case to some extent that there's no, like they're not spending any money on taking care of the horse and you know, you look at a, a Olympic athlete and the team that they are surrounded by and the work that we do.

As startup CEOs is just as.

Is.

Just as stressful or horrible.

Your odds are just as low. And I often wonder why there isn't more of a structure team that you put behind you, where you have your, like, you know, you have your coach and you have your doctor and you have your, you know, sort of your nutritionist.

Nutritionist, yeah.

Psychological advice advisor. Helps you with your, you know, with your imposter syndrome or what have you. And maybe in the work that you're.

Doing, you'll endeavor to put something together.

Yeah. Yeah. I think you're so right. And there's so many. I think there's so many reasons why.

It'S. The VCs want to do. A lot of them say, like, we'll do that for the CEOs, but what CEO wants to do with their VC and with their, you know, that's what the PE firms do. And they say, here's our operating team and we'll be your support system. And everyone's like, I don't want you to be my support system. Like, I. And so it's a. It's kind of a. But that's actually what I believe. I believe exactly the same thing. And that, that analogy is so good because it isn't just a person. It is the masseuse, the nutritionist, the coach, the psychologist, the agent. It's all of those things, you know, and so I like that a lot. Okay, no, last question. Knowing everything you know today, all the experience you've had, plus all the coaching that you've done, what is the one piece of advice you would go back and give yourself before you started your first job ever?

So the, the.

In, in.

In my career, anyway, the things that I thought were the most terrible in.

The moment ended up often being the biggest lessons.

So as an example, I. I worked.

At one of those, like, prestigious management consulting firms, and I got. They call it, like, counseled out where.

They'Re, you know, you're not going to.

Make it to that.

They said I'd make a great partner.

But I wouldn't actually make partner. And I was just devastated.

I worked so hard at the job.

And I had, I had thought when I got the job, and I can, like, I'm never the smartest person in the room, but I can always outwork anybody else.

And as it turns out, that just didn't work. Like, I couldn't have worked any harder. And I just, I was just bad.

At the job I wasn't good at.

And it was.

Yeah, it was devastating to me. And.

Two years later, I was running Stitcher and, you know, hiring people there. And it turns out I was much better at being a founder CEO.

Noah, thank you very much for doing this with me. I really enjoyed this and I, I'm happy we got a chance to meet. I think it was Paula who put us in touch. So I'm going to thank Paula for that. And yeah, thank you. I, I, I. There's so much good stuff in here and if people want to get in touch with you, what's the bet? What's the best medium? Is it LinkedIn or website or email? What's the best way? If someone wants to talk to you about coaching?

Yeah, LinkedIn. I'm just Noah Shannock. S H A N O K Or.

Just email me at Noah Startup CEO Coach. Great.

Awesome.

Thank you, Noah. Hopefully everyone enjoyed this. If you did, please share this out with your networks and we'll see you for next episode of Not Another CEO Podcast. That's a wrap for this week's episode of Not Another CEO Podcast. Thanks for joining. For show notes and more, please Visit not another CEOPodcast.com we'll see you next week.

Sam.