Essays

A Practical Guide: How To Find an Executive Coach (Part 3)

When I give advice to executives looking for a coach, I typically break it down for them into these straightforward steps on how to structure their search. This is Part 3 of my series on executive coaching based on insights from 80+ interviews with executives and coaches, focused on how to find a coach. Check out Part 1 for a rundown of the results and data, and Part 2 for what I’ve learned as a coach so far.

What I Didn’t Know About Coaching (Part 2)

In part 2 of my series on executive coaching, I’m sharing the coach-specific insights from my 80+ interviews with executives and coaches, and how they’ve changed the way I coach. If you’re looking for the data, you can also refer to Part 1 of this series or visit Part 3: How to Find an Executive Coach.

An In-Depth Guide to Executive Coaching: Everything You Need To Know (Part 1)

I’m excited to share what I’ve learned from 80+ conversations to map the executive coaching industry:

How are executives finding their executive coach?
What areas is coaching effective for and how are people leveraging it?
How much do executive coaches typically charge, and what’s the structure?
How do you maximize the value from your coaching relationship?

I was curious about these questions, too, in the course of answering these I collected interviews across 13 coaches, 17 founders and executives (Director/VP/GM+) who have engaged coaches, and 50+ prospective coachees.

7 Things No One Tells You About Being a Startup Founder

When I founded my first company Connected back in 2011, I was really surprised by the intensity of the emotional rollercoaster. By then I’d already worked everywhere from large corporate Microsoft to tiny new startup and felt prepared. I was dead wrong. I remember describing it to a friend as, “After I started a company, everything became 10x more intense. The highs and lows filled with terror, sometimes all in the same hour. Everything else I’d done in my professional career fades in comparison.”

Marketers: Hone Your Customer Intuition

It is tempting to fully embrace data-driven decision making and demand all marketing efforts are backed with data and ROI. While this sounds reasonable initially, marketing is both an art and science, and great marketers should also spend time honing their customer intuition to be successful in their craft.

What’s Surprised Me About Parenthood

Two and a half years in, I wanted to reflect on some of my top surprises of parenthood. TLDR highs are higher and lows are lower than expected.

Finding Meaningful Work with “Designing Your Life”

With all of the talk of The Great Resignation, it doesn’t come as a surprise that many people are asking the question, what do I really want to do?

Many people follow a guiding star throughout their early career. Their career transitions are based on what their parents or peers expected, what their peers did, where there was the highest status, or even taking what they were good at to its natural extreme. Later on, what they begin to question is whether that work is meaningful or significant to them.

The Leadership Chasm

Why transitioning to management is hard: The Leadership Chasm

When I coach founders and execs, I often encounter them in a point of transition. Reaching the point in your career where you transition from individual contributor to a people leader is often a story of struggle. Here’s why it’s so difficult to rise to the new challenge: The Leadership Chasm.

✨I’m an executive coach✨

Exciting news to share— I’ve started a part-time exec coaching practice for founders and executives looking to scale themselves as they scale their teams. 🚀Read More »✨I’m an executive coach✨

Good Marketer / Bad Marketer

Inspired by a recent conversation that reminded me of Ben Horowitz’s Good Product Manager/Bad Product Manager post, I wanted to share a cleaned up version of a similar talk I prepped for a subset of my team at SurveyMonkey on what a world class marketer looks like.Read More »Good Marketer / Bad Marketer