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How to Coach Startup Founders and Adapt to Different Styles

In this blog post, I interview Alisa Cohn who is an executive coach who works with senior executives and high-potential leaders to help them create positive permanent shifts in their leadership impact and the results they achieve. She was named the #1 Startup Coach in the world at the 2019 Thinkers50 Marshall Goldsmith Coaching Awards in London, and also named one of the Top 30 Global Gurus for Startups of 2020.

Summary:

How she coaches the founders and the cofounders in the startup world.
Adapting to different styles in a high-growth environment, 360-degree feedback, and conscious communication.
Switch between personal and professional mindset, the power of breath in and out.
How to plan for high stake conversations and calming techniques.

Not only these practices are applicable to Startup founders, but also to everyone who has direct reports or in similar capacity.

Now, the interview starts:

Nishant: You were named the #1 startup coach in the world at the thinkers50 Marshall Goldsmith leading coaches awards in London. How do you coach the founders and the cofounders in the startup world?

Alisa: If I think about founders, they really have a few common elements. So first of all, they’re not always aware that like they’re the founders and they’re the CEO that people are looking at them a certain way. They’re just thinking —hey, I’m me, and they have to kind of get used to the fact that they show up as the boss.

The second thing I would say is that they are constantly having to adapt their style. That’s what a high-growth environment is. It requires you to adapt your style. So you have to be constantly learning and accelerating your own growth to keep up with the needs of the growth of the startup.

Ryan Daniel Moran —Building Relationships, Lessons from Entrepreneurs, Mindset, Growing Your Network, and More

A few weeks ago, I called my friend Jennifer Goodman to discuss a business problem. I wanted her feedback to know if I’m thinking straight. She nudged me to listen to Ryan’s podcast and suggested I should connect with his entrepreneurial community.

Who’s Ryan?

Ryan Daniel Moran is a serial entrepreneur, investor, author, and host of Capitalism.com.

I’ve met Ryan a few times via mutual friends(and at retreats). I started listening to his podcast and really got obsessed with it. I don’t usually listen to business podcasts other than Tim Ferriss. Also, I instantly signed up for this Cap Con event.

Below is his short bio and how you can connect with him, and then follows the list of my favorite podcast episodes.

Ryan Daniel Moran is driven by the belief that entrepreneurs solve problems, and that the world needs more empowered entrepreneurs. He’s proud to take a bold stance on behalf of for-profit entrepreneurs. He believes business owners create change, and the government does the opposite. He believes that success requires personal responsibility and ownership. He believes that businesses must create, rather than extract. And he believes that the ultimate way to get ahead is to act in the service of others. That’s Capitalism in a nutshell: own, create, and serve.

Connect with Ryan: Website | Instagram | Cap Con Event

Lessons from Abraham Hicks — Vortex, High Vibrations, Powerful Abundance

I’ve been following Abraham Hicks for quite some time and my morning starts with her Youtube audios. Below are my favorite audios I’ve listened to many times.

Abraham Hicks is an inspirational speaker and author. She co-authored eight books with her husband, Jerry Hicks. Together, they have presented Law of Attraction workshops for Abraham-Hicks Publications in up to 60 cities per year since 1987. Hay House, Inc. published the Hicks’ best-selling book, Ask and It is Given, in 2004. Since then, they have also published four more New York Times Best-sellers:

Pema Chödrön — When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times

I’m so thrilled to share the book When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Time with you. This book has been recommended on my podcast many times — but I never felt inclined to read it. The summer of 2022 brought some earth-shaking events in my life and I felt called to get a copy of this book.

This book has helped me to embrace fears, acceptance of life as is, learning to sit with the discomfort. I’ve read this book dozens of times almost every week. Depending on what’s going on with me —I pick up a paragraph, sit with it, and feel the sadness, disappointment, anger, or whatever is flowing through me.

I share a small excerpt from this book.

“Relaxing with loneliness is a worthy occupation. As the Japanese poet Ryokan says, “if you want to find the meaning, stop chasing after so many things”

“To stay with that shakiness – to start with a broken heart, with a rumbling stomach, with the feeling of hopelessness and wanting to get revenge – that is the path of true awakening”.

“This very moment is the perfect teacher”

“When we find ourselves in a mess, we don’t have to feel guilty about it. Instead, we could reflect on the fact that how we relate to his mess will be sowing the seeds of how we relate to whatever happens next”

Brandon Bennett — Guided Mindful Oasis Meditation

This blog post is about Guided Mindful Meditation sent to me by Brandon. I met him a few years ago at a Toastmasters club and since then we kept in touch. He was kind enough to offer me two coaching sessions which were very helpful. If you’re looking to have peace, and balance in life, and want to be more mindful of how you live life — I do recommend working with him as he will help you open new portals of awareness and understanding of self.

Download Meditation: Guided Mindful Oasis of Inner Peace Meditation

Brief intro about Brandon:

Brandon Bennett is a former NFL Executive turned Certified Mindful Leadership Coach. His mission is to empower leaders to live more balanced, peacefully productive, and emotionally authentic lives. He helps highly-driven executives, entrepreneurs, and non-profit leaders create deeper levels of peace, mental clarity, and inner freedom in their lives.

A Certified Mindfulness Meditation Teacher, Holistic Health Coach, and Highly Sensitive INFJ personality type, Brandon fuses both eastern and western modalities to assist leaders in slowing down, in order to sustainably reduce stress, create peacefully balanced lives, and tap into their highest human potential.

To learn more – Connect with Brandon: Website | Coaching Offerings

Want to hear an episode that explores finding Peace in the body? Have a listen to my conversation with Mark Coleman, in which we discuss “From Suffering to Peace, Freedom from the Inner Critic, Recognizing Pre-Verbal Traumas, Finding Peace in the Body, Mind, Heart, and World, and much more.

The Nishant Garg Show:

This show is about extracting information on Mindfulness, Personal Development, and Spirituality. I am on a mission to spread Mindfulness and I’d love for you to join me in this movement. For any questions, please contact me. If you have enjoyed listening to my podcasts, please subscribe to the new podcast updates on Itunes please provide your reviews on Itunes which will really help me.

Mei-lan Maurits, Abraham Hicks —Raise Your Vibration, Raise Your Frequency, Awaken Your Intuition, Angelic Frequency

We are all vibrational beings. Our thoughts, feelings, and emotions all contribute to our vibration. When we vibrate at a higher level, we attract people and things that match our vibration, as you know, the law of attraction.

There are many ways to raise your vibration such as meditation, music, activities that give you joy, people that bring out the best in you, etc, etc. In this post, I mention some resources I’ve been practicing on a daily to raise my vibrational frequency.

Tuning Up Your Abundance Vibration for Abundance and Love: Is your vibration bringing peace or turmoil into your life? Here is Abraham Hick’s advice on tuning up your vibration that will turn your life around. What you believe you receive and tuning up your vibration starts right here. Relax and find your vibration with Esther’s word from Abraham’s understanding and knowing! Wishing you the best on your journey inward and out.

The Key to Create Anything You Want – Abraham Hicks

Abraham Hicks – The key to have highest vibration! Always!

Henna Inam on Adaptability, Midlife Crises, Growth, Self-Reflection Questions, and Self-Compassion

This post is an excerpt from my interview with Henna Inam. This excerpt sheds light on overcoming mid-life crises, self-reflections daily questions practice, self-limiting loops, practicing self-compassion during tough times and bringing soul to work.

You can check out my full interview with Henna here Henna Inam — Wired for Disruption, Lessons from Ashram, 5 Shifts in Agility, 10 Powerful Questions to Ask Yourself, and More (#120)

Let’s begin..

Mid-life crisis:

One of the things that I realized while growing up and this goes back to my midlife crisis is that I was so adaptive. The reason I wrote my book wired for authenticity is that I really had struggled, even in my corporate career. I worked in corporate America for Proctor and Gamble, then for Novartis. I was an Asian woman, mostly in meetings with white men. As I grew up through the organization, I was in various C-level roles. I was always adapting and it was sort of the same thing as in my childhood growing up I was always adapting and until I had my midlife crisis and I thought about this has been a really great adventure – but who am I? what do I want? What’s really important?

I think that the advice I would have is for people to dig deep inside, to find their deepest inspirations, to find their most brilliant strengths, and to find a need, that calls to them, there are so many needs right now, whether it’s a need To help people become the best versions of themselves, the people that you lead, or whether it’s a need to find innovative solutions because you are a brilliant thinker and scientist or, whether it’s a need to, create something new, in terms of experiences for people. Our job is to find that fire that’s inside of us that ignites us so that we can step into the most powerful and inspired.

Daily questions practice

This is something that has been written about and talked about by Marshall Goldsmith, who is a leading CEO coach. So I have an Excel spreadsheet and it has my list of 10 questions and I have an accountability partner. We call each other at 7:00 AM every day and she’s got her list and we basically say, how do I rate myself? I rate myself from 0 to 10 – did I do it or did I not do it? 10 is – yes I did it.

Did I exercise today – either walk 10,000 steps or work out for at least a half-hour?
Self-care is sort of the key component to maintaining our own energy and is such an important part of any impact that we’re going to have externally. The question is – did I drink 64 ounces of water?
Did I make healthy food choices? And for me, it’s protein and veggies and anti-inflammatory foods.
Did I eat mindfully with appreciative attention?
Did I meditate and connect with my wisest self for 15 minutes today?
Did I journal the three things that I’m grateful for?
Did I write my top three priorities and progress them for the day?
Did I do my best to practice courage today in situations that called for it?
Did I appreciate the good in others?
Did I take my daily vitamin supplements and Apple cider vinegar?

Creative Labour and Defining Success

How do you define success for yourself? I’ve been very curious to know how people define success for themselves. I started the podcast in 2020 with the clear intention of building skills and relationships with people, and I’d say that I am super successful as I’ve been achieving what I wanted based on my intention.

In my quest to learn more about how people define success — I’ve asked several of my podcast guests about it and read other articles and quotes on the web. This post is a short compilation of podcast interviews and selected quotes that I’ve struck me deeply.

If this post resonates with you, please help me in spreading the word about it. That’d mean the world to me. Thanks!

Podcast interviews:

Quotes and Passages:

“Excerpt from Maria Popova, founder of Brain Pickings: “…I frequently get emails from young people starting out and asking, ‘How do I make a successful website or start my own thing?’ And, very often, it’s tied to some measure of success that’s audience-based or reach-based.’ How do you build up to seven million readers a month or two million Facebook fans?’ But the work is not about how to get that size of an audience or those numbers. That’s just the byproduct of what Lewis Hyde calls ‘creative labor,’ which is really our inner drive. The real work is how not to hang your self-worth, your sense of success and merits, the fullness of your heart, and the stability of your soul on those numbers—on that constant positive reinforcement and external validation. That’s the only real work, and the irony is that the more “successful” you get, by either your own standards or external standards, the harder it is to decouple all of those inner values from your work. I think we often confuse the doing for the being.”