Adam Foroughi, CEO of Applovin Corporation, provides a first-person testimonial about coaching sessions with Susan Drumm of Meritage Leadership. He describes seeking coaching after his company went public, initial skepticism, and later benefits including reduced stress, improved delegation, better physical health and sleep, and useful team-management exercises. He recommends Susan’s coaching to other entrepreneurs, especially stressed or lonely CEOs.
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Adam Foroughi.
Applovin Corporation.
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Hi, my name is Adam Farughi, and I'm CEO of a company called Applovin Corporation. I met Susan a couple years ago. It was right around the time we'd gone public as a business. We're a technology company, and we listed in the NASDAQ a couple years ago. Going public from being private was a really stressful moment, and it completely altered what my goals were in my professional life and impacted my personal life. So I went to Susan looking for someone who could help me work through some of those changes to get me back to a healthier place in life. When we first started sessions, I was a skeptic in a way. I had a lot of success in my career. This is the third successful business I'd started. And I felt like if you change what's working, there's a risk, and that risk could be that you could have less success going forward. So I always had a fear of speaking to a coach fundamentally because of that. And what has happened is that obviously that fear wasn't valid. This type of experience exposes you to different viewpoints and allows you to evolve your own viewpoints as well. And I think that evolution was a big net positive for me over the last couple years. We spent a bunch of sessions talking about the pressures of the role that I do, the impact on my life, both professionally and personally, and then tying it back to goals that I do have for myself. She's been immensely valuable in processing these things, has gotten me back to a place where I've been able to delegate a lot more tasks to my team. I've been able to free myself up mentally. I've gotten to a much more relaxed state. Physically, I've gotten to better health than I think I've ever been. I'm sleeping more than I ever have before in the past, and I can attribute it back to these types of sessions. And so one of the other benefits of coaching is that you can do similar processes through Susan and her team, with the team that you have reporting up to you. And I've done those exercises. And it's interesting to understand both the composition of the team. A lot of it will be fairly obvious if you've groomed and developed and put together that team in the first place. And some of it will be less obvious. And understanding the backgrounds of the people on your team and the needs that they have allows you to figure out how to better manage them and make sure that those pieces fit together. And so going through that exercise has been quite helpful for me as well. I would recommend Susan to any other entrepreneur who is in a very stressful situation. And I think CEO is one of the more lonely roles that exist on the planet. And so anyone who feels alone, has a lot of stress is going through these types of career changes that magnify that stress. Taking these types of sessions could be very impactful.
