Named the Top Startup Coach in the World at the Thinkers50/Marshall Goldsmith Global Coaches Awards in London, Alisa Cohn has been coaching startup founders to grow into world-class CEOs for nearly 20 years. She is the author of From Start-Up to Grown-Up, published by Kogan Page. A onetime startup CFO, strategy consultant, and current angel investor and advisor, she was named the number one “Global Guru” of startups in 2021, and has worked with startup companies such as Venmo, Etsy, DraftKings, The Wirecutter, Mack Weldon, and Tory Burch. She has also coached CEOs and C-Suite executives at enterprise clients such as Dell, Hitachi, Sony, IBM, Google, Microsoft, Bloomberg, The New York Times, and Calvin Klein.
Marshall Goldsmith selected Alisa as one of his Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches – a gathering of the top coaches in the world – and Inc named Alisa one of the top 100 leadership speakers, and also been named one of the top voices of thought leadership by PeopleHum for 2021.
Listen to this informative Publish. Promote. Profit. episode with Alisa Cohn about coaching startups for success.
Here are some of the beneficial topics covered on this week’s show:
– How startups have a lot of structure that gets built just in time.
– Why managing your psychology and emotions is an important for entrepreneurs.
– How your job as a leader is to coordinate and conduct your employees.
– How many startup founders love their product but aren’t in tune with marketing skills.
– Why getting great results for your clients leads to natural word of mouth referrals.
Connect with Alisa:
Links Mentioned:
alisacohn.com
Guest Contact Info:
Twitter
@AlisaCohn
LinkedIn
linkedin.com/in/alisacohn
Rob Kosberg:
Hey. Welcome, everybody. Rob here with another episode of our Publish Promote Profit podcast. I have a super guest for you today I think you’re going to love and really enjoy learning from, Alisa Cohn is the, named the top startup coach in the world at Marshall Goldsmith’s Global Coaches Award in London. She’s been coaching startup founders to grow into world class CEOs for nearly 20 years. She of course is a best-selling author of From Start-Up to Grown-Up. We’ll talk a little bit about Alisa’s book as well. She’s a guest lecturer at Harvard, Cornell Henley Business School, the Naval War college. She’s been in Harvard Business Review, Forbes Inc, Bloomberg TV. And now finally the Publish Promote Profit podcast. So Alisa, super glad to have you on today. Looking forward to chatting with you.
Alisa Cohn:
Thank you so much, Rob. It’s great to be here with you.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah. Thanks for taking some time. I’m not sure what percentage of our listeners are people that are in startups, but maybe let’s start by defining what that means. And I know that you coach larger organizations as well and different kinds of organizations. So tell me what you would define as a startup and how that looks, and then talk to me in general about your expertise and how you help companies, whether they be startups are not?
Alisa Cohn:
Well, a startup is really the kind of company which is founded by an entrepreneur or two co-founders with a big vision in mind. And they often relate to getting investment. So getting venture capital, which means that they have a certain amount of expectation around scale. So I work with companies who are either in that startup mode with 20, 50, maybe even 70 employees, as well as those in the scale up mode, which are 100 and 500 employees who are really creating the structure to build the product or service as they go. So I think that’s what also really defines a startup, is that there’s a lot of structure that’s getting built just in time.
And then the way I help is exactly because there’s a lot of just in time. You’ve got a first time founder very often who’s never done this before, never even worked in a company before. So they don’t always have the leadership skills that they need to scale the growth of the company. And then they also hire people and should over time who are more experienced than they are and who have more expertise than they do. So how do you manage those kinds of people? Those are some of the topics that I deal with in leadership coaching and startups.
Rob Kosberg:
Love it. Love it. And of course your book, which certainly sounds like it’s focused on this exact topic. There it is, From Start-Up to Grown-Up. Within your book, do you lay out a framework? Maybe you could describe that a little bit. What does the framework or the steps look like as you enter an organization for the first time looking at maybe where its weaknesses and strengths are, et cetera.
Alisa Cohn:
Yeah. So my book is From Start-Up to Grown-Up and for me, I wanted it to be like you were getting coached by me. So to your point, it lays out the way I think about something. So the way I first think about something, and I said this to the Tim Ferriss Show is like, what’s going on around here? Right. I first just understand what is happening and how do I make an entry point? So there are things always happening, and the frameworks I lay out in the book are in three dimensions, managing you, managing them, and managing the business. So you are the first person you lead every single day. The first person you lead every day is the one who wakes up in your pajamas. Right?
Rob Kosberg:
I like it.
Alisa Cohn:
And then there’s a lot to do about that. A lot to think about managing your own psychology as well as managing your emotions. And then also having the right self-awareness, you can be the right leader. So then for what? Well, you’re leading them, all those people around you, the employees, your co-founder. And so you’ve got to learn the tools of lead leadership and management. And that includes having difficult conversations and giving feedback and coaching, delegating, knowing when to zoom in and when to zoom out. Also, I’m a big proponent of giving positive feedback because that’s the most motivational tool there is for people. And so you start managing all those people, but in service of what? The business, right? So what is the business require? Where are we going? Are you measuring how we’re doing? How are you running meetings? So that’s all of those, that’s the umbrella under which I talk about really coaching in context of starting up.
Rob Kosberg:
That is an enormous amount of stuff.
Alisa Cohn:
Yeah. Sorry. I might have went too much.
Rob Kosberg:
Well, I mean like, as you were describing it, I mean, any one of those categories could have its own coach, right?
Alisa Cohn:
Yeah.
Rob Kosberg:
I mean, we’re talking about self-improvement stuff and managing self. You’re talking about leadership skills, corporate building, corporate culture, et cetera. And then of course, all that goes into the scaling of the company and all the elements of that, the marketing, the business, that sort of thing. So maybe give me some clarification around biggest mistakes and the things that maybe are the biggest blind spots that you see so that somebody listening can go, “Oh, we got that exact problem at our place.” And start matching up that, hey, it’s not supposed to be that way.
Alisa Cohn:
Yeah. Well, this is true for all leaders. And certainly it’s true for entrepreneurs. A big blind spot is that you don’t always realize that your suggestions are orders. Your whispers are orders. Your brainstorm is orders, right? So people are listening to you from the guise of, “Oh, someone told me to do that.” I’ll tell you a funny story that’s in my book. I worked with this CEO in Texas, and they did the Christmas party, the holiday party down the street. Great. So she said to somebody offhand, “Oh, that that was so convenient. If it were any more convenient, it would have to be in the parking lot.” That ha-ha-ha-ha-ha. Life goes on in August of the following year, someone said, “Do you want a tent for the Christmas party?” And she said, “What are you talking about?” Said, “You said you wanted our Christmas party in the parking lot.” And she said, “No, I didn’t.” And that happens all the time inside of companies.
Rob Kosberg:
That’s good. And obviously that can be relatable. That that doesn’t matter. The newness of a company, the size of the company. I mean, I’m thinking about stuff that I told a couple of employees this morning and I’m like, yeah, I guess those were orders, weren’t they?
Alisa Cohn:
Right, exactly. Exactly.
Rob Kosberg:
That’s a blind spot. But what are some of the, someone may hear that and go, “Well so what? I want to tell them what to do.” What happens within a company that becomes negative in that environment, right? What are the issues that they face?
Alisa Cohn:
Well, the question is, what do you think is your job as a leader? If your job as a leader is tell everybody what to do, then you better have all the right answers. If your job is to coordinate and conduct the orchestra, then you can rely on other people to have the right answers because you don’t have to have all the right answers. And no matter what, their 10 hands, 20 hands, 100 hands and 10 brains and 20 brains and 100 brains are better and more effective, doesn’t matter how smart you are, than your one brain and two hands. That’s life. And so you need to recognize that you being the smartest person and issuing order does not go very far. It goes much further for you to create an environment people can bring their best selves and their best ideas and their best discretionary effort to the cause.
Rob Kosberg:
Love it. Love it. Love it. Love it. Talk to me. I don’t know if this is just my own brain and the way my own brain works, but when I hear startups, my brain all often goes to technology, but of course it can be around anything. It could be e-commerce or et cetera. With who you work with, is there one more definitive market or genre than another? And if the answer is yes, maybe explain that a little bit to me.
Alisa Cohn:
Well, I do work a lot with tech startups, and I would say everybody, every startup is a tech startup. You have to have a technology enabled component to what you’re doing. Otherwise, you can’t really scale. If you want to be a grocery store, you may not have to, you may not want, may not need technology, but you’re probably not a startup in the traditional way that we think of about startups. There’s also biotech and pharma startups. And there’s also these days climate, autonomous vehicles, but all of them have some version of technology inside of them.
Rob Kosberg:
Clearly, clearly. So all of those would in essence be considered tech startups in one way or another.
Alisa Cohn:
I think so.
Rob Kosberg:
Right?
Alisa Cohn:
Yeah, I think so.
Rob Kosberg:
They’re scaling the tech. They’re using ones and zeros basically as the key component of the growth of their business ultimately.
Alisa Cohn:
Yeah, definitely.
Rob Kosberg:
So, talk to me about marketing and sales in that industry. When you often think of founders, the best ones seem to be really good at the sales and marketing end of it, but not many of them seem to be. And so maybe I’m wrong about that, and that’s just from looking from the outside in. But how do you address that? What are some of the key components of fixing or looking at that?
Alisa Cohn:
Well, I think that founders are naturally attuned to either technology or to the product itself. They may not be so attuned to marketing. By the way, some founders are really attuned to sales, as in being with customers. But again, not really to marketing. So I think that’s where you have to usually hire in expertise. I think the mistake founders make is to think it’s not important and building a brand is not important and getting their marketing message out is not important. And of course it is very important. It’s important in terms of customers finding you, but also even valuation of the company. Buzzy companies are more highly valued.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah. And is this an element that you help with or that you guide in?
Alisa Cohn:
I mean, having been coach for 20 years and been inside of a lot of a startups, I know the playbook, and I know that it’s important, but it’s not my area of expertise. My expertise would be to say, “I think you need to hire a marketing person.”
Rob Kosberg:
Right, right, right. Let’s find the right person so you as a leader can guide and direct and put the right seat on the bus, so to speak.
Alisa Cohn:
Right.
Rob Kosberg:
Okay. Good. Good, good, good. Okay. So, give me an idea of some of the things that you’ve seen. I love the story, by the way. So if you want to tell more horror stories, I love to listen to those. But turnaround stories where you saw, okay, here were some like real issues that we faced and here were some things that we did, and this is what came out on the other end.
Alisa Cohn:
Well, there’s a CEO I worked with who his team was near mutiny. And when I got there, it’s bad. And by the way, sometimes I come into a mess. Right. They’re not like, “Oh, I’m going to hire a coach because I’m so enlightened.” They’re like, “I’m going to hire a coach because I got a problem.” So the problem was the team was near mutiny. And so I did was I asked around. I do 360 feedback to find out what’s going on around here. Right back to that. What’s going on around here? So what’s going on is that the CEO is smart and capable and cares a lot and wants the company to be successful. And what’s also going on is this the CEO, when you come to ask him a question makes you feel stupid, and also wonders why you’re not doing it right, but isn’t always clear on what he wants you to do.
So, he didn’t realize that self-awareness … coming back to self-awareness. He didn’t realize that. So I helped him think about how do he engage with these people in order to support them in finding their own answers, rather than just giving the answer. I supported him in asking questions that made people feel good and confident and not stupid. And I helped him think about the clarity with which he has delegate tasks and set goals. And within a year and a half, the company had had massive growth and then they ultimately sold the company for a really good outcome. So I’m very proud of that because I know that my intervention was helpful in that.
Rob Kosberg:
Nice. It’s interesting. You can have somebody that is really kind and does really care, but it seems like there’s this huge disconnect between that and the way they’re communicating with their team. Is that something that you see a lot?
Alisa Cohn:
Oh yeah.
Rob Kosberg:
And especially in tech, you think of the people that maybe aren’t as skilled socially. I know that’s not always the case and that’s a stereotype, but oftentimes, is that something that you see and needs to be addressed?
Alisa Cohn:
I think it’s all leaders. If you run a business, if you founded the business, it’s your baby. No one’s doing it good enough for you. Also, you’re working harder than anybody else. And I think also fundamentally you’re in a hurry. So you’re always constantly pushing people to go faster, faster, faster, and it is an intense environment. I think that a startup environment is an intense work experience, and you have to make peace with that, and it can have a difficult effect on everybody.
Rob Kosberg:
Gotcha. Love it. Let me change gears a little. I want to hear more about your business, how you grow your business. We’ll get into the book and the use of the book in just a minute. You’ve obviously done a really good job not just in delivering results for your clients, but also in building a really nice celebrity, thought leader foundation for yourself with everywhere you’ve spoken and all that you’ve done. So talk to me about how you market your business, how you grow your business and what that looks like.
Alisa Cohn:
Well, first, I really try, right? So what that looks like is it doesn’t just happen to anyone it’s like, I make an effort. So obviously the most of important things to me is get great results from my clients, and then they refer me to others. So that’s one piece of the business itself. And then I realize that to be well known and have a bigger impact so that my platform could touch more people and have a bigger impact, I would have to do things like writing and speaking. So the first you start just doing that for free and on your blog. And then you can leverage all of that into more paid speaking. And then from my blog to writing for Forbes and writing for Harvard Business Review and writing for Inc. That gives me a bigger platform, a bigger stage, and then more opportunities come to me. But also I have the impact to touch more lives.
Rob Kosberg:
Love it. Love it. I totally agree with that. I mean, I teach regularly that there is a hierarchy of desire. And whether we like it or not, those that are looked at as celebrities in their field, thought leaders, experts in particular are going to command the highest prices and are going to be the most attractive. If you need to have brain surgery, you don’t want to go to the person that just barely got out of school and no one has ever heard of. I mean, you want a guy, go to the gal that wrote the book or the guy that is speaking on stage for that particular thing. And that’s true, not just for brain surgery, but for everything. So I love that part of it just because this is interesting to me. Writing for Forbes, writing for Harvard Business Review. How did you do that? You said you start writing for your blog and then I’m writing for Harvard Business Review and Forbes.
Alisa Cohn:
Yeah.
Rob Kosberg:
That’s a big gap right there.
Alisa Cohn:
Yeah. I’m going to tell you. I’m going to tell you exactly how I did it. First of all, I started writing. So long ago, long ago, I had one client. I had a very big client. I had client concentration in one area and I loved it. I loved it. I loved it until a new person came in and suddenly I was not so happy there anymore and things were not so good. And I’d go on long runs and I’d be mad. How come it was that way? And by the time I ended my run, I had one insight. Number one, actually two insights. Number one, you got to diversify your business. Number two, the way you do this, you have to word out and write your newsletter. So I created my newsletter, my monthly newsletter, monthly newsletter. I never was able to get 12 additions out of my monthly newsletter.
Nonetheless, I got some of it out. Right. You don’t want to be perfect. So I got that out. So I had a background of writing. And then I met up, I was at a dinner and I met the publisher of Worth magazine. And he and I talked a little bit, and I sort of screwed my courage up and I said, “I’d love to write for you.” Well, as it happens, they were looking for voices from women’s leadership. So he said, “Great.” And then he sent me to his more junior person to work it out. How many times did I have to follow up? Three times I had to follow up. Then we finally had a conversation. And then because I had written my monthly newsletter, not so monthly, I had clips to show them, and so they were happy to have me do that.
And now I had my monthly newsletter and my Worth, and using those clips, I got my way into Forbes. And using those clips, I got my way into Inc. And then after all that, I was able to write for HBR because I was already a known quantity. So I sent it to everybody because you don’t have to be per perfect, but you do have to put one foot in front of the other and be consistent. You’ve got to follow up with people because we’re always like, “Oh, they don’t want to talk to me.” Maybe they want to talk to you, maybe they don’t, or maybe they’re just email over overwhelmed, like you probably are too. So I think it’s really important to keep following up and have the ability to be persistent and consistent in the activities that you do.
Rob Kosberg:
Love it. Alisa, that’s a masterclass right there. I appreciate that. You don’t have to be perfect. All the things that you outlined, and this didn’t happen overnight. It sounds like it happened over a number of years-
Alisa Cohn:
Years, years.
Rob Kosberg:
… of work, which is great. I write for Forbes, and so do I do some even though that’s not my thing, is to do the writing. My thing more is to help other people get PR and media for my clients, the authors, et cetera. I know it is no small feat to do those things. It takes a lot of work, and you get to enjoy the thought leadership, the benefit of all of that because you’ve done that groundwork. So congrats on that. Very, very cool.
Alisa Cohn:
Thank you, thank you.
Rob Kosberg:
It’s good. Let’s talk about the book a little bit and specifically how the book integrates with your business and what you do. As you know, we talked about brief our audience, primarily business owners who either want to write or have written something. So talk to me about how you use your book to grow your business, how you use your book to grow your thought leadership, to get clients, all of those things.
Alisa Cohn:
Yeah. So first of all, I wanted to write a book I was proud of. That was goal number one. So I’m very happy and I’m proud of my book From Start-Up to Grown-Up, and I’ve gotten a lot of good feedback about it. So that’s very validating. The second thing is the way I use it is actually like this. We would not be talking unless I had a book. Right?
Rob Kosberg:
Exactly.
Alisa Cohn:
I would not have been on the Tim Ferriss Show unless I had a book.
Rob Kosberg:
True.
Alisa Cohn:
I would not have been featured in First Round Capital and First Round Review if I’d had not had a book. So it gives people a context to feature you, invite you into podcasts and be able to write about you. Also, it gives you ideas to write about. Also, people want you to speak in speaking engagements on your book or have something to give other people. So for all those reasons, a book is a really important plank in your platform. And then once people read it, they’re like, “Oh, you’re so interesting. You’re so smart. Go Alisa.” And so then they reach out to you because they want the person to your point earlier who wrote the book. Literally I’ve had people say, “I know that you wrote the book on startup leadership.” And like, yes I did.
Rob Kosberg:
I love it.
Alisa Cohn:
That’s the book. Yeah.
Rob Kosberg:
Yes. I love it.
Alisa Cohn:
That’s how I use it.
Rob Kosberg:
Any cool stories around something that may have happened, like you got a speaking gig because of your book, and it led to a new client or anything like that comes to mind? It’s always inspiring to hear that kind of stuff.
Alisa Cohn:
Well, I would say it starts and ends with the Tim Ferriss Show. I’m sure that you and your listeners are familiar with the Tim Ferriss Show.
Rob Kosberg:
Oh, yeah. It’s gigantic.
Alisa Cohn:
Yeah. Millions and millions of listeners. And when he was kind enough and gracious enough to have me on his show, first of all, my Amazon ranking, I mean, you don’t even know, shot up. I was languishing in the 85,000 of Amazon. And by this journey, I was in the 2,000th of Amazon and I was the number one seller for multiple days in entrepreneurship. So that was massive. And so what came out of that? Many, many people who wanted me to do off-sites for them, wanted me to coach them, of course. They listened and they introduced me to other people. I would just also say it gave me extra moxie to also reach out to other people. Some people who also were on the Tim Ferriss Show and I connected, so that’s one massive story. Right. But from on the back of that, other people heard me and how me on their podcast. And I can’t count the number of inroads I’ve had for. I literally can’t count the number of, the amount of business and the number of just people who know more about me that came out of that experience.
Rob Kosberg:
Love it. And will continue to.
Alisa Cohn:
Yeah, probably. Especially now I’m on this podcast, Ron.
Rob Kosberg:
Yeah, absolutely. Alisa, I love it. Thank you. Thanks for your stories, explaining what you’ve done with your book and how you’ve used it, explaining the whole process bumps and all of becoming a writer for Forbes and Inc and Harvard Business Review, et cetera. Really, really value. Where can we send people to learn a little bit more about you, maybe potentially work with you or have you speak, et cetera?
Alisa Cohn:
Well, you can check out my own podcast, which is also called From Start-Up to Grown-Up, and that’s where all podcasts are found. It’s but also about the journey from founder to leader, but really it’s a journey of all leaders. You can also come to my web website, alisacohn.com, A-L-I-S-A C-O-H-N dot com. And I have in the back of my book scripts for delicate conversations and on my website, I have five additional scripts for delicate conversations that you can download for free as a resource. And you can also come to Twitter and LinkedIn and say hi.
Rob Kosberg:
I love it. I love of it. Scripts for delicate conversations. That is a great lead magnet. You need to go and get that at Alisa’s website right now. Absolutely.
Alisa Cohn:
Thank you. Thank you.
Rob Kosberg:
So, I know I am going to.
Alisa Cohn:
Right now.
Rob Kosberg:
I have your website pulled up, but I didn’t get that yet. So I’m going to do that.
Alisa Cohn:
Amazing. Thank you so much.
Rob Kosberg:
Alisa, thanks for being on you. You’re a great guest. Thanks for all the wisdom that you brought. Really appreciate it.
Alisa Cohn:
Thank you for having me. It was great to be with you.
Rob Kosberg:
My pleasure.
