How to Build Your Company from Start-Up to Grown-Up – In Just 7 Minutes with Alisa Cohn

Resources/Links:

• Wanting to Know What to Say When Handling a Delicate or Difficult Conversation? Learn more on how to handle difficult conversations using the right words and conveying a better message: alisacohn.com/scripts

Summary

Do you often find yourself not being able to achieve the self goals and business goals that you have set?

Have you been feeling like you’re not making any progress in your business and just feel stuck at the startup phase?

Are you ready to find out how you can transform your business from startup to grownup?

Alisa Cohn has been named the #1 Global Guru for Startups in 2021. She has coached startup founders to grow into world-class CEOs for nearly 20 years.

In this episode, Alisha talks about how you can scale your business by understanding three primary things and managing three important dimensions that are influential to you and your business’s growth. She also shares her insights on the importance of embracing the inner CEO self that can help you build a life and business satisfaction.

Check out these episode highlights:

• 01:03 – Alisa’s ideal client: “Startup founders who want to scale their leadership in service of scaling their business.”
• 01:12 – Problem Alisa helps solve: “I help them understand where they are, where they are going, and how are they going to get there in three dimensions– managing you, managing them, the team, and managing the business.”
• 01:37 – Typical symptoms that clients do before reaching out to Alisa: “ As I talk about in my book, From Start-Up to Grown-Up, there’s a lot of different ways that founders realize they need to find a coach. So one is that they’re having, like, issues with the business itself. They’re not achieving the results.”
• 02:30 – Common mistakes that people make before they find Alisa’s solution: “They hire the wrong people. They neglect to onboard those people. They don’t recognize that their role as a leader is to facilitate the environment around them.”
• 03:22 – Alisa’s Valuable Free Action (VFA): “I’m going to give you two top tips. One is to step back, and journal or meditate or tune into your inner voice and your inner intuition every day as a practice. Because you really want to get a handle on all the jumble that’s going on in your head.”
• 05:03 – Alisa’s Valuable Free Resource (VFR): Check out Alisa’s Scripts: alisacohn.com/scripts
• 06:17 – Q: How can I be the CEO in my own life? A: Because people don’t realize that they’re the author of their own lives every day. The first person you lead every day is the person who wakes up in your pajamas.

Tweetable Takeaways from this Episode:

“The key to leadership development, in part, is marrying your intention-- your thoughts, your feelings, what you want to get done with your impact, how that's landing with other people.” -Alisa Cohn Click To Tweet

Transcript
(Note, this was transcribed using a transcription software and may not reflect the exact words used in the podcast)

Tom Poland 00:10
Greetings, everyone, and a very warm welcome to another edition of Marketing the Invisible. I’m Tom Poland beaming out to you from little Castaways Beach here in Queensland, Australia, joined today by Alisa Cohn. Alisa, good day! A very warm welcome. Where are you hanging out?

Alisa Cohn 00:24
Thank you so much for having me. I’m hanging out in New York City.

Tom Poland 00:27
New York City, the Big Apple that never sleeps.

Alisa Cohn 00:30
Yup, that’s right! All those things.

Tom Poland 00:32
All those things and more, I’m sure. For those of you who don’t know Alisa, she was named the Number One- not number two or three- Number One Global Guru for Startups in 2021. She’s coached startup founders to grow into world-class CEOs for nearly 20 years now. That brings us nicely listen to the title of this interview, which I want to grill and thrill you on, “How to Build Your Company from Start-Up to Grown-Up”. Question number one, our seven minutes starts now. Who is your ideal client?

Alisa Cohn 01:03
Startup founders who want to scale their leadership in service of scaling their business.

Tom Poland 01:08
Perfect! Thank you. Question number two, what’s the problem you solve for them?

Alisa Cohn 01:12
I help them understand where they are, where are they going, and how are they going to get there in three dimensions– managing you, managing them, the team, and managing the business.

Tom Poland 01:21
Managing you, managing them, and managing the team. Thank you for that! Whistling through the questions. Six and a half minutes left. Can you tell the listeners, what are some of the symptoms that they are going to be experiencing? What’s going on in their business or the life that gives them kind of a heads up that they should be finding out more about what you’re doing?

Alisa Cohn 01:37
Yeah, that’s the money question! As I talk about in my book, From Start-Up to Grown-Up, there’s a lot of different ways that founders realize they need to find a coach. So one is that they’re having, like, issues with the business itself. They’re not achieving the results. One is they’re having personnel problems– issues around the team, people not following, you know, sort of the right direction. And they could also be issues with themselves, might be imposter syndrome, concerns about their own leadership, or inability to adapt. All of those kinds of things are good markers for, “It’s time to hire a coach”.

Tom Poland 02:10
Right. Thank you! And question number four, these are growth-oriented individuals, probably feeling very entrepreneurial, and also perhaps a little dissatisfied. So what I’m saying is they’re going to try some stuff. Question number four is, five and a half minutes left, what are some of the common mistakes that some of your best clients tell you that they made before they found your solution?

Alisa Cohn 02:30
Ah, so many things! They hire the wrong people. They neglect to onboard those people. They don’t recognize that their role as a leader is to facilitate the environment around them. So other people get to the answers versus having the answers themselves. They don’t communicate enough. They fall susceptible to feeling like they’ve expressed themselves because the music in their head is clear, but they haven’t married the intention with their impact. And I would just say to everybody, the key to leadership development, in part, is marrying your intention– your thoughts, your feelings, what you want to get done with your impact, how that’s landing with other people.

Tom Poland 03:05
Beautifully expressed! Thank you for that. Just under five minutes left. Question number five is I’m looking for valuable free action. It’s not going to take them to the end of the road, perhaps, but it might be a step in the right direction. What’s one thing that someone could do, as a top tip, that’s going to give them and just get them started going the right direction from going and growing?

Alisa Cohn 03:22
I’m going to give you two top tips. One is to step back, and journal or meditate or tune into your inner voice and your inner intuition every day as a practice. Because you really want to get a handle on all the jumble that’s going on in your head. The second tip is before you hire somebody, make sure that you are really being clear with the jobs you need to be done, you want this person to do and then you line up the jobs to be done with the evidence of the person that you want to hire has done them already. Two tips!

Tom Poland 03:52
The evidence. Perfect! Can you give us- we’ve got lots of time left, so you can give us an example of a role and perhaps some of the evidence that we might have to look for.

Alisa Cohn 04:02
Sure. When you’re hiring a product manager, you’re looking for evidence that they’ve done. They’ve managed a product before. They’ve been able to bring stakeholders along, do customer research, that kind of thing. If you’re looking for a product leader, those skills that make a great product manager are not as relevant as a leader who needs to juggle multiple things, manage several product managers, and navigate with a set of peers who are more sophisticated and more season. So you want to think about, “Am I hiring a product manager or a product leader?”

Tom Poland 04:34
“And what’s the evidence that I’m looking for to demonstrate success in that specific role?”

Alisa Cohn 04:39
I’m looking for the background of people- right. So I’m looking for the background of people who influenced effectively at a senior level who have managed a set of people together and navigated the sort of things that come inside of peers working together.

Tom Poland 04:53
A clear list of evidence. Thank you for that! So let’s have a look at one valuable free resource. Where can we send people to so they’re gonna find out more about what you do?

Alisa Cohn 05:03
So in my book, what I have is “11 Scripts for Delicate Situations”. So what that means is what you have to do when you deliver bad news, how you have to handle it when you have to tell somebody that they’re not getting a promotion, but you still want to keep them, how you manage layoffs, how you handle firing someone. I have additional free scripts on my website. It’s at alisacohn.com/scripts. That will give you a set of scripts that will help you in your professional life with difficult conversations or delicate conversations.

Tom Poland 05:34
Perfect! Thank you very much. So that is Alisa, A-L-I-S-A, Cohn, C-O-H-N .com/scripts. 11 conversations that you’re probably going to need to have with someone on your team and how to have those conversations. Two minutes left. Thank you so much.

Alisa Cohn 05:53
They’re different from the ones in my book, I just wanted to say that.

Tom Poland 05:55
Okay, great. So get them both! Go there, get those and then get the book. And what’s the book again, Alisa?

Alisa Cohn 06:00
The book is called, From Start-Up to Grown-Up: Growing Your Leadership While Growing Your Business.

Tom Poland 06:05
It looks solid. It looks like it’s not a brochure. That’s a real book.

Alisa Cohn 06:10
A real book.

Tom Poland 06:12
So thank you for that. We’ve got 95 seconds left. What’s the one question I should have asked you but didn’t?

Alisa Cohn 06:17
You should have asked me, “Hey, Alisa. How can I be the CEO in my own life?” Because people don’t realize that they’re the author of their own lives every day. The first person you lead every day is the person who wakes up in your pajamas. Think about how do you want to manage yourself on a regular basis throughout life to achieve the business satisfaction, the life satisfaction, that is right for you.

Tom Poland 06:39
Perfect. Alisa Cohn, thank you so much for your time and your insights.

Alisa Cohn 06:43
Thank you.

Tom Poland 06:45
Thanks for checking out our Marketing The Invisible podcast. If you like what we’re doing here please head over to iTunes to subscribe, rate us, and leave us a review. It’s very much appreciated. And if you want to generate five fresh leads in just five hours then check out www.fivehourchallenge.com.