The Entrepreneurs for Impact Podcast: Transcripts

 #137:

5 (or 10) Lessons I’ve Learned from Coaching 100+ Climate CEOs

Chris Wedding:

All right. In today's episode, I'm going to share parts of a, I guess, short white paper I wrote called 10 Lessons I've learned from Coaching 100+ Climate CEOs and guess what? It's just what it sounds like. So, let's get started. I'm going to go through maybe half of these and you can find the rest for free on our website.

So, number one, if you stand still, you're dead. Kind of grim, but I think you know where this is going. I think that most of the CEOs know they've got to keep, quote unquote, sharpening their axes, their metaphorical axes, because there's always room to grow as leaders, managers, capital raisers, customer service geniuses, et cetera. Maybe it's true that only the paranoid survive or maybe we just have to avoid complacency with our market position, nothing is guaranteed forever. As they say, the only constant in life is change. Okay, short and sweet as you see, we're all too busy to read too much.

Number two, I slash they have the power to reflect, not just react. Reflect, not react. Relates to one of the most popular quotes among my climate CEO peer group members in Entrepreneurs for Impact, which comes from Viktor Frankl. Many of you have read his book, Man's Search for Meaning, psychiatrist, author, Holocaust survivor. The quote is as follows, “To a stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response and in our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

There's one CEO member of the group who says that he keeps this quote on a sticky note, next to his computer as a good reminder to reflect versus just reacting. You can also think about it along the lines of a friend of the podcast, Ted Lasso, be curious, not judgmental. I think we've had this topic come up in our climate CEO peer group discussions, and I think many of the CEOs reflect on often the negative outcomes of being judgmental versus curious. Whether that's implying that they have all the answers and their teams do not, it's jumping to conclusions and cutting off creative ideas that could have come out of a smarter group versus just one person, aka being curious. So, instead of reacting in the moment, these CEOs, not always, we're not perfect, try to pause, reflect, and be proactive with a more thoughtful response.

03:03

Number three, sometimes they need to turn the knob to 12. As in like, when it goes from one to 10. This reminds me of a shirt I saw at my daughter's track meet recently, and on the back of the shirt it said, “Beast mode,” as in like an animal beast mode, as in like go beast mode. Imagine turning the volume to 12 when the highest level is thought to be 10, you can’t sustain rather this level of intensity forever. As many of you listeners know, building a company is a marathon and not a sprint despite how it may feel many weeks or weekends or evenings, or unfortunately vacation sometimes. Sometimes you just got to go honey badger intense to break through a wall and as you know, there are lots of walls. By the way, if you've not seen the YouTube video that references the intensity of honey badgers, hilarious and impressive. All right.

Number four, customers don't care about features despite many entrepreneurs wanting to sing the songs of the features of their products and services. They want benefits. They want alignment. Look, I've been there. Many of you may be there or have been there. Super easy to fall in love with the cool, maybe tech attributes of the latest version of our products. But what customers usually want to know about is how your business solution changes answers to questions such as, is my day or month or quarter easier now than it was before? Does my boss, do my partners, do my investors think I'm smarter versus before, and I better out-compete my peers with your solution? Do I feel less stressed now that I have your solution? Easy one, am I saving money? Am I managing the P&L more effectively? Are my risks of making a choice to go with you mitigated? Again, lower my stress in making a decision to say yes to you. Maybe the last one, this is certainly beyond any features of a product. Does the company believe what I believe? Are we on the same team?

Number five, and maybe we’ll stop here, made this a short one and leave room for your other long list of un-listened to podcasts, be the coach, not the player. So, CEOs obviously are great at doing many things, which is partly why they were able to start a business and get traction, but to scale the business, they can't do everything. I know this is totally like rocket science, but hang with me. They've got to build systems, empower people, give more responsibility, delegate effectively, automate, delete. The last one, pretty hard and if you haven't read it, there's a good book, I mean, just a really old book, really classic in the entrepreneurship space called The E-Myth. I think it's The E-Myth Revisited that tells in the story format, the need to create systems to be more the coach versus the player.

06:19

Or I've certainly encouraged some of our CEO members, investor members to try and replicate themselves and create a set of principles, let's say. Maybe a normal human version of Ray Dalio's book Principles; Life and Work. Now that one's almost 600 pages. There's no need for your version to be 600 pages, but imagine if you thought of 15 principles, 20 principles per quarter that defined maybe how you thought, how you wanted the rest of your teams to think perhaps, and answers to common questions, questions you'd ask yourself as you approach new problems, for example. Looks not to be perfect, but with feedback, ways to iterate and look, again, you don't need to arrive at 592 pages, but more ways to turn you into a coach orchestrating what happens on the field versus just being the player.

All right, so just a quick tease, they're all really short and sweet despite years and hundreds of thousands of hours with these folks trying to bend the curve on climate and defy gravity and getting a new enterprise through the atmosphere. The rest of the super short read is available on our website, which is www, I know you're glad I said that, entrepreneursforimpact.com, the word for, F-O-R .com, just like this podcast.

Look, if you find something useful in it or if you have lessons you think I should add to future versions, nothing is done, nothing is written in stone. Drop me a note at team@entrepreneursforimpact.com or come find me on LinkedIn and drop me a message there. All right. Hope you enjoy.

ABOUT OUR PODCAST

We talk about #ClimateTech #Startups #VentureCapital #Productivity and #Leadership.

And we’ve become one of the top 3% most popular podcasts in the world.

Why do climate innovators love us?

Because of our inspiring guests — dozens of climate tech CEOs, founders, and investors that are raising or investing tens of millions of dollars and removing millions of tons of greenhouse gas emissions from the atmosphere.

Why should you listen?

To start, grow, and invest in businesses with impact, meaning, and profit.

Learn about our guests’ career paths, founder stories, business strategies, investment criteria, growth challenges, hard-earned wisdom, productivity habits, life hacks, favorite books, and lots more.

Who is the host?

Dr. Chris Wedding is a 4x founder, 4x Board member, climate CEO peer group leader and coach, Duke & UNC professor, ex-private equity investor, ex-investment banker, podcast host, newsletter author, occasional monk, Japanophile, ax throwing champ, father of three, and super humble guy (as evidenced by this long bio). 😃

Learn more here:

Climate CEO peer group community: www.entrepreneursforimpact.com

2-minute newsletter: https://entrepreneursforimpact.substack.com 

Live online course about startup capital raising (coaching, peer feedback): https://t.ly/V6xcB

DIY course about startup capital raising (170 slides, 70-item library, 250-investor list): https://t.ly/QCcl5