Angelina Darrisaw, Founder & CEO of C-Suite Coach

This week we talked to the founder and CEO of C-Suite Coach, Angelina Darrisaw.

We discuss how she has scaled her business to include 40-plus coaches and works with partners like Google, Major League Baseball, and Wayfair.

We learn the adjustments needed to go from being a solo coach to being CEO of a thriving business, how our early experiences in the corporate world share her vision for C-Suite coaches, and why everyone should have a board of directors for their career.

www.csuitecoach.com

Transcript

Keith: [00:00:01] All right. Really excited about my next guest. She is the founder and CEO of C-suite Coach. This is Angelina Darrisaw. Angelina. Welcome to the show.  [00:00:09][7.5]

Angelina: [00:00:10] Thank you. Thank you so much for having me.  [00:00:11][1.4]

Keith: [00:00:12] Yeah, no, I'm really excited. A mutual friend of ours, Chris, put us in contact, told us we should be talking. And I trust everything that he says. He's an amazing person. So tell us a little bit about C-suite coach. What is it? When did you start it?  [00:00:26][14.3]

Angelina: [00:00:27] C-suite Coach is a management consulting company that also offers coaching and training. So we work with a lot of large corporations on developing their people, developing external communities that matter to them, and we leverage training and coaching in order to accomplish that. One of the things that sets us apart is we have over 25 coaches from diverse cultural backgrounds. They're all certified executive coaches, which allows us to go in and coach at scale within a company. So really, really proud of the work that we're doing. Founded in 2015.  [00:01:02][35.0]

Keith: [00:01:03] You hit on one of the things that I was most interested to talk about right at the beginning, Coach at scale, right? So often when I talk to career coaches who have made that shift, it is one on one personal. When I start to talk about building that business, they're like, It's the time constraint. Right? Like, I'm only one person. I can only do so many partnerships. What was the choice for you to make it something that could scale and that could work with corporations versus working with individuals?  [00:01:28][24.9]

Angelina: [00:01:30] A couple of things. One, I come from a business development background, so I was first a business analyst and then a manager, then senior manager of digital business development within media. In that lane I'm always meeting with or I was always meeting with young entrepreneurs who got venture capital funding who are trying to plan these scalable companies. And I think I just have a knack for figuring out how to make things scale. It is one of my superpowers. I was certified in coaching and when I began I did my coaching program at NYU in 2014 and when I was thinking of transitioning out of corporate in 2015, I did some 1 to 1 coaching and I had exceptional clients and I love the work, but as much as I am passionate about it, I feel people should stay in their zone of genius. I knew that that was not going to be the business model for me. I really wanted to think about making it scalable, so that has been the foundation of what I was interested in early on and it took me some time to get there, but I've always been building towards that.  [00:02:41][71.2]

Keith: [00:02:42] Very cool. And so then how did you start to recruit? Right? Because I think when a lot of people go out there and shift into the coaching world and become certified for it, it it's a very individual endeavor. It's a lot like writing a novel or like, like, you know, it feels like an individual pursuit. What was the approach that you had to finding these amazing coaches that would be joining the team.  [00:03:02][20.7]

Angelina: [00:03:04] Giving away my secret sauce? Okay, so a couple of things. One, podcasts like these, I'm very mission driven. In fact, I do So right now my whole team is about just over 50 people. And one of the things I do that includes contractors and full time staff, we do engagement surveys to just understand why people are working with us. And unprompted in the survey, it's like, what makes you work with C-suite coach or coach? There's no leads. That is just the question. Almost 100% say the mission, which I find is Chris. Our mutual friend, talks about the importance of keeping the mission at the forefront. And I've found that if you can excite people about your mission and you really believe it and live it, it can really engage them in wanting to be a part of that growth journey. Because when I first began recruiting coaches and it might have been 2017, I think we had our first external coaches. It was really far and few between in terms of work for them, but they still stayed with me and they still have been there some that from that very first engagement I did are still a part of my growth now, and it is the mission that they say makes them want to keep working with me.  [00:04:26][82.2]

Keith: [00:04:26] That's very cool. And that's one of the trickiest parts for new coaches, right, is you have to a be good at it. Right? Like first and foremost, you have to make sure that the clients that you have are excited about it and want to work with it and do that. But then you have to continue to recruit. Right? And I think that part is a part when people move from the corporate world to the entrepreneurial world, is the hardest, is knowing that you're actively servicing your clients and working with your partners, but then you're also always recruiting. How do you balance that out between the coaching part and the recruiting part to get the next client to get? The next partner.  [00:05:01][34.4]

Angelina: [00:05:02] Yeah. So a couple thoughts. You said so much that got me excited and brimming with thoughts for those individual coaches. So the first thing I want to say is, if you are an individual coach that's thinking about growing your business and having some frustrations. Being a part of a network that is driving opportunities for you is great. That's one of the things we do is we drive opportunities for other coaches, but also I think being really focused on your strategy for being seen on Google is something that is under utilized for a lot of individuals trying to grow their service base business. For me, I think a couple of things. We do have a breadth of services. So while the name coaches in the company, it's not the only service we provide. And I think what makes it really easy for us, I should say easy because definitely hard. But what makes the sell for me exciting and how I've made the sell easier is we can offer multiple pieces of work within one contract. So we're coming and we're able to provide the executive coaches at scale who can do 1 to 1 coaching group coaching or lead other coaching programs. We can do training and development, and then we can also do a lot of program design program management work that takes the whole work off of the client's hands. And so I think being multifaceted in that way really helps make it a strong positioning that differentiates us from other coaching companies because we can offer more.  [00:06:38][95.5]

Keith: [00:06:39] That's amazing. So I was just at a conference, I was at a marketing conference this week. The gain is and I was talking to an older head there who's talking about how mentorship has deteriorated right when he was growing up in the industry, he's been 25, 30 years now in the marketing industry, he said. I had multiple mentors, people that took the time and worked with me and he thinks that it's one of the hardest parts right now for 23, 24, 25 year olds is there working part in the office, part online, and they just haven't been able to establish that mentorship challenged him on that and said, well, wouldn't you be the person that would be mentoring them, Right? Like, where is this? I would love your take on that. As you're talking to rising executives and rising stars at corporations, do you feel like mentorship has gone away? Do you feel like there's a need for more people to step up in it? Where do you think the level is right now for people to find mentors?  [00:07:31][51.5]

Angelina: [00:07:32] I think it's varied. In fact, one of the programs we support with group coaching is a mentorship program within a large corporation. And so maybe in part in recognizing the lag, some companies are really returning to formalized programs within their companies. So if there is that formalized program within a company, I think people should definitely take advantage of it. In terms of where it's shifted, the way we work has shifted completely, right? I even just think to my first job, it was 9 to 6 and you went home and smartphones were just coming out and we didn't have email on our phones and there was a lot more separation. So being able to have that cut off allowed everyone a lot more free time. Yeah. Now we're not in that space anymore. There isn't separation and there was a lot of demands on people's time and everyone I think is feeling very overworked right now. So trying to cut in and get that one on one time with someone who is really focused on business goals because they're worried about the threat of layoff or worried about economic downturn is just going to be hard. And that's just the reality of where we are. We don't have a whole lot of that time for personal connection, which I think is something that we really need to, as a culture, be thinking about how do we shift back? On the flip side, there are just so many resources available very easily. I always bring up this example that I was once at, and I wish I could remember the name of the woman who said it, but I was once at a conference and I was listening to a panel and a woman on stage said, Oprah is my mentor. And it made me stop in my tracks. Like, what? What did this woman do? Who is she? Let me look her up. How did she get Oprah as mentor? And then she said, and I've never met Oprah, but you know what I do? I read what she writes. I watch how she presents herself. I pay attention to where she's present, where she's not present. I make my own master class because there's so much out there about her. And I think that that's now becoming the case about all of us in a lot of ways. Right? We have visible profiles, we have social media, we have LinkedIn, we have websites, we're speaking on panels, we're on podcasts. Right. And so there's a lot of information about there about anyone whose path you admire that if you can't get to them, you can easily find it. So it does make being a self-starter, though, right? And that is something that I'm always encouraging, especially younger people to be thinking about how can I be more proactive and realize it's not always going to be just handed to you? So you do have to be resourceful and be really a self-starter in that way.  [00:10:24][172.1]

Keith: [00:10:25] Yeah, and that's a big one, right? The motivation, the self-starter. You know, I talked to a lot of folks, black and Latino folks, who were the first person in their family to work in corporate America, first person with VP, SVP, EVP, titles and me, you know. Yeah, yeah, same. My father did not work in corporate America. My mom was a teacher. And and, you know, they didn't really understand what I was doing. And honestly, I didn't understand what I was doing. And that's where, like, I've connected with a lot of people. I was like, I'm 25. I'm sitting in an office. I don't know how to act. I don't know how this is supposed to go down. What advice do you give to young folks who are kind of just starting out, who maybe did amazing in college and are self-motivated? Self-starters, but they have just started in the corporate world. How do you navigate this in this new world where so much of it is done online?  [00:11:10][45.9]

Angelina: [00:11:12] Yeah. For me, coming from that background, very similar to what it sounds like you're describing a single parent, my mom also an educator. And we didn't I didn't grow up maybe with as many resources as my peers. It's all little context, right? Because I feel very grateful for the things I have, but also recognize it was a very different economic situation than most people that I was working with and going to school with. But that being said, I was really motivated about by financial opportunity. And so I was very strategic about not chasing just the glamorous parts of media, but also looking at what paid. And so that meant that I did less attractive work sometimes. I always bring up that making that switch. My first role at ESPN was a sales and marketing associate, and my second role was a business analyst. Sales and marketing associate was fun. You get invited to the magazine party, you meet celebrities, you get games, you're doing events, and business analyst work is often in spreadsheets. You're reading reports from BCG, you're breaking that down for sales people. You're helping them understand industry trends. And it is not the glamorous, sexy work. But guess what? My salary jumped 20 K in 11 months when I got that role. And so, you know, for some people, money might be a motivator. I also recognize that for everyone, it's not a motivator. But we also can't always have all the points that something my personal trainer says, right? So there's often choices and we have to be realistic with ourselves. If I am more motivated by being at the fun events, I have to recognize that my salary may not be as high and that actually be intentional and own that choice. If I'm more motivated by the money, I might have to do some unexciting things to get to that and be okay with that choice. Right? So that would be the biggest thing. Figure out what it is you really want. Recognize that there's going to be things that come along with that that you may not want and be okay with that.  [00:13:26][134.3]

Keith: [00:13:27] That's awesome. I want to go back a little bit to school in the city, right? Because if you grew up in the city or around the city, you kind of understand how how it works, right? There's opportunity for high achieving people to apply to different high schools. And so it's kind of like the college process, but it's in high school. And it's funny, my wife worked at a school that was in Bushwick, but it moved to Governors Island, and I remember the year that it was going to move to Governor's Island. We're talking to a kid, awesome 14 year old who is like, I've never been to Manhattan. And I kind of I was like, Oh, right. Like, he was like, Why would I go to Manhattan? Like, everything's here in Brooklyn, right? Like, he was like, How do I do it? And you're like, Oh, right. This is a different thing for them, right? Like, this is like Manhattan's nothing for some kids sometimes in Brooklyn. Can you talk a little bit about your experience because you lived in Brooklyn but went to school in Manhattan, right?  [00:14:18][50.6]

Angelina: [00:14:18] I switched in the middle of middle school. I was going to school in Brooklyn before public school in seventh grade. I got a scholarship to a private school and went there through high school. So many different thoughts. So one, what you said just triggered a memory for me. My mom was a high school principal in Bushwick, which is a part of Brooklyn, and many of the students had never been out of Brooklyn. And she wanted to plan. She did plan a trip for them to go upstate into the woods. It was like a hiking experience or something, and parents wouldn't sign permission slips to go 2 hours away because they were afraid of their kids leaving Brooklyn. And I think it just speaks to how you could be so proximate to opportunity, to experiences, but it can still feel really inaccessible. And I think that that's something, again, that we have to look at, like how do we create more access? Not only sometimes it's the feeling, okay, everything I need is right here in Brooklyn, but sometimes it's the feeling I'm going to go there and I'm going to be excluded and there won't be room for me, and I'm going to be made to feel like I'm a dangerous person or something is wrong with me. I remember being in private school my first year and being asked if I was in a gang or had I seen shootings. And one thing I always bring up, we did research for one interview. I did. The median income in the neighborhood I grew up in was less than the tuition at my probably.  [00:15:53][94.8]

Keith: [00:15:54] Got it. Yeah.  [00:15:54][0.4]

Angelina: [00:15:55] Wow. So when you talk about just a huge gap in terms of resources that I felt like I was moving through two worlds all the time. And it just really made me look at access and opportunity very differently.  [00:16:09][14.9]

Keith: [00:16:10] Was your mom at the Bushwick? High school building. It was like off of Myrtle.  [00:16:13][2.8]

Angelina: [00:16:13] It was was during the Bloomberg years when a lot of those schools got sectioned. It was closed because it was one of those high schools. Yes. Academy Award.  [00:16:22][8.4]

Keith: [00:16:23] Okay, cool. Yeah. My wife was at the one that was a nautical based school, so they went, oh, Arbor Day School. Yeah. You're familiar.  [00:16:31][8.4]

Angelina: [00:16:32] With. Yeah. Yeah, my brother, actually, my brother went there. I wonder if he knows your wife.  [00:16:36][3.8]

Keith: [00:16:36] Oh, no way. Okay, cool. Yeah, I love that you are forward thinking. And and, you know, looking at those inequities that are happening in high school, for many people, that leaves a little bit of a chip on their shoulder once they start to see that. Obviously, many of us are smart enough to be going to these schools, but or access this type of education, we're just not getting it. How does that play into what you're doing now? Does that still kind of have a little bit of a resonance in what you do day to day?  [00:17:03][27.1]

Angelina: [00:17:04] Absolutely. When I talk about that mission that all my coaches and other contractors and full time are excited about, it's very much rooted in their we are very mission driven about creating access, creating equity in the workforce and building more inclusive teams, creating that sense of belonging and communities at work. And so that's very deep in the work that I do and I feel was really interesting in this space and in this time is the bar keeps moving, keeps moving higher, right? For us recognizing what is equity at work, I think we're all being challenged by it in a really positive way. And so me being a naturally curious person, it is a great opportunity to stay curious, to stay open, to continuing to redesign what inclusion looks like, what equity looks like. And that creates a constant challenge, but one where I feel we're really focused on making progress towards that every day.  [00:18:12][67.6]

Keith: [00:18:13] That's great. I was at a conference a few weeks ago, a much smaller, more intimate group, and it was tough. It was a challenging conversation. It was it was a lot of black and Latino leaders who are just being honest in a room saying, I'm burnt out on diversity, equity and inclusion. One person put it really well. They were like, I work two full time jobs. I'm, you know, the SVP of my company, and I manage 150 people and I am the voice to the C-suite of all black people. And he was like, Yeah, that's really exhausting and I need a break from it. And the room collectively was like. But we can't. We really we have to push forward. What advice do you give to folks who are who are in that position for probably their whole career? They've been battling to prove themselves and to get to this position, and now they're at it and they're being asked to do essentially two jobs.  [00:19:01][48.6]

Angelina: [00:19:02] One unpaid. Well, more and more, the folks who are in that position are recognizing that it is labor, extra labor, and there are demands for that. In some companies we work with, even in participating with GS, whether it's through compensation or through non compensation, a non compensated opportunities like career enrichment, they're investing in those employees differently and recognizing that they're adding to the fabric. They're creating a better culture which leads to retention, which saves companies money, and so that they need to be recognized for their efforts in doing that. So I think one, the first thing I would say is if you are doing two jobs, get paid for it. The second thing I would say is take care of yourself, whatever that means for you at work, whether that is, I need to invest in a coach so I feel better skilled in dealing with conversations that frustrate me in managing conflict and helping other people use language better so that they can connect with me differently, whatever it is. Or I want my team to do this so the burden is not on me and challenging them to do that. The other thing that I would say in addition to that is I don't think anyone should be doing extra labor, I do feel I have extra gifts because of the amount of times I've been placed in that situation. And for me, frankly, it's been since seventh grade where I have learned to be a connector, to be well positioned to be a diplomat. Right. And the communities, because I've had to translate my life to different people in different worlds so many times. And so I recognize that as I am a better leader because of it. Right. And I'm a more skilled leader because of it. So I think that that's always a skill that you can sell, any skill that you have that's different. So make sure that I guess again, goes back to monetizing that, like make sure you're bringing that up as something that you've learned through having to do those two jobs.  [00:21:13][130.8]

Keith: [00:21:14] Cool. I talked to somebody a few weeks ago who is doing his first board of directors role and just kind of first time in the C-suite and just had a good laugh about it. He was like, it is a different stratosphere. I knew the things that I was doing and, you know, I could keep my head pretty much down and just do the best work up until this point. And now it's a completely different game on here. I wonder. I would love to hear from you as you talk to senior leaders who have moved from, again, EVP, SVP Roles to now I'm actually in the C-suite and now I'm part of the board or I'm part of the fiduciary responsibility of this company in a way that's different. What have you seen the needs being there, going from that senior executive role to the C-suite?  [00:21:55][41.1]

Angelina: [00:21:57] The management responsibilities are really different. The way in which you have to please and figure out how to manage up is really different. So I would just say it is a higher level of pressure. There's a lot riding on you. You're having to manage much broader teams and at the same time still make sure that you're managing up really well too. So it's just a different level of pressure.  [00:22:26][29.7]

Keith: [00:22:28] It really is. It's one of those things that I think you don't really you don't realize what happens in board meetings until you actually part of it, because I've had, again, many friends who are like, they just meet every three months and look at the numbers and talk over it. And they don't understand like the prep work that goes into that side conversation so.  [00:22:44][16.5]

Angelina: [00:22:45] Much.  [00:22:45][0.0]

Keith: [00:22:45] The managing up kind of the politics to understand who's voting where and what the industry trends are.  [00:22:50][4.7]

Angelina: [00:22:51] When you saw that, it triggered for me because I just did an on boarding training for some new hires at a company and the Q3 earnings had just come out for that clients. And I was talking to them about, you know, everyone is having all these fears or concerns like, is my job good enough or am I doing a job right? And I'm like, even early in your career, you should get comfortable learning about what your company values, what your company is saying, reading those reports regularly. Getting really comfortable about knowing how the whole company makes money. I think often early in our careers we focus on just like that one widget, right? Like that right thing that we do. And we're not always paying attention to the role it plays in the larger puzzle. And so I think the more you start focusing on that early in your career, the more you're positioning yourself to ultimately get in those rooms.  [00:23:46][55.2]

Keith: [00:23:47] That's really smart advice. I want to go all the way back to the decision that you had. So you had Viacom and walk me through kind of the experience of going from a corporate leader to an entrepreneur.  [00:23:58][11.5]

Angelina: [00:23:59] You know, it's it's so funny because it actually was a seed that was planted years before in 2011, 2012. I had my dream job that I always wanted, but I was really excited about because I really like the team. But I unfortunately had a really, really bad manager like harassment that would show up at my hotel room at 11:00 at night to me, like that kind of stuff, right? And because I was so young, so naive in my career, I wasn't really saying anything about her bad behavior. I was just allow myself to be stressed and like, cry, be a little depressed. Working through that at work. She would just do really awful things. And so I think in that moment I was ready to quit without a job. And as I mentioned, I didn't come from a background where I have any sort of parachute to fall on. If I didn't have a job, there was no way for me to pay my rent or anything. But that's how miserable it was. So I started sometimes those bad experiences plant the seed and I started a blog at that time called C-suite Swag, so I can speak of cool things. And it was a career blog about what does it take? Like what is the music I'm listening to, what are the closure wearing? What would it take to be in the C-suite, and how do you start thinking about that early? And I use rap lyrics. I use fashion to talk about C-suite swag. And from there I got my first paid speaking engagement at Rhodes College and any really have the blog that long? Just a little bit, you know, put yourself out there to share paid opportunities. By the time I got to Viacom, I started just doing more things outside of work, even though I had really heavy jobs, intense jobs. I got a modeling campaign nationally with Pantene. I was doing all these things that had nothing to do with work, and I just said, I think I want a little more freedom because I felt I'm not being myself fully at work. No one in my company knows that I do pageants or that I model outside of work. They all think I remember I was in a 360 with my SVP and I asked him, What do you think I'm passionate about? He was like, You are so passionate about using data to solve problems. And I was like, okay. And I'm on the board of a nonprofit at the time. Like, I was like, No one here actually knows me, and it's because I don't feel safe to be known here. And so that was something that I recognize a lot of people of color feel at work. In addition, like I was in a very privileged place, I was getting promoted every year of my career. And so I just realized like there were a lot of needs. One, personally, I needed something else. And then too, there were a lot of needs to be fulfilled and offering coaching and training opportunities and really shifting company cultures to to make that to make more people of color in particular feel included at work.  [00:27:08][188.2]

Keith: [00:27:09] Well, first off, I'm sorry you had to deal with a manager like that, I think you know. People think that that culture has gone away or that you can't be that way. You know, complain about cancel culture, but I hear more and more stories about that. I dealt with that. It's fully documented. The person that I worked with that was that way. So I won't like regurgitated, but it can be debilitating. You know, I've talked to people who have left the industry because of that. Right. And it's so powerful that you turned it into something that said, okay, well, this is going to be my motivation, my secret sauce. This is how I want to work against that type of person, against that type of of way of leadership. And that's so powerful, right? Because that's what's going to change that. It's not going to be because it's obvious, right, that the threat of losing your job if you're an asshole doesn't scare people off. It really absolutely doesn't. And so the changing of the culture has to come through people like you who say, well, this is actually how you should lead. So thank you for doing that. It's really hard. Let's talk a little bit about your volunteer work, because you do a lot and you most recently are now part of the Black Arts Council for the Museum of Modern Art. What about art? What about dance? What about all of those things motivates you and kind of keeps you going?  [00:28:22][73.1]

Angelina: [00:28:23] Yeah. For a long time I used to feel because I am very analytical. I mentioned I previously was an analyst. I spent a lot of time in spreadsheets. I will say spreadsheets aren't really my favorite thing anymore right now, but it is still the way my brain works. And so because of that, for a while, I just felt like I wasn't creative. And I used to say that, and I just say, always just be mindful of your language because you're telling yourself stories about yourself. I realized that to be an entrepreneur, to be a problem solver, to be a consultant, it takes so much creativity. And I need creative spaces that inspire me that also are mission aligned, that are creating more access for people that look like me in the arts. Because arts is another area that has just so much systemic racism embedded in how it works. And I really needed to be around more of those spaces. So I became passionate first about art, I guess Art through dance with Alvin Ailey in 2012, which steering committee and I recently started collecting art, and that made me really interested in the work that Black Arts Council does to really open up more spaces one for learning more exposure for more black people in the arts.  [00:29:47][83.8]

Keith: [00:29:49] It's very cool. And what have you found? How that work different than the work that you're doing in day to day? Because it's still work, right? Like volunteering for those places and being on the steering committee is still work. How is that different than your day to day?  [00:30:00][10.9]

Angelina: [00:30:02] Well, one thing I'll say is, as an entrepreneur, when I don't have a lot of time, I like I like all parts of my life being connected, right? So I like that. Even through volunteerism or through socializing, connecting with people that have a shared mission. Inevitably, some professional opportunities do come from that, and that's exciting. And then I also think I get new ideas. I mentioned that in the space right now of. Seeking equity of thinking about how to create more inclusive workplaces. There's still so many deep needs for us to continue to push and challenge each other and explore what that means. And I think having exposure and thinking about that through other lenses and completely different worlds really challenges me to bring something new to how we do work. And I really appreciate that.  [00:30:58][56.0]

Keith: [00:30:59] How have you been finding clients? It sounds like you are kind of a neat marketer. You're smart about it, you're going about it in really interesting ways. How are you going out there and finding that next great client?  [00:31:10][11.6]

Angelina: [00:31:12] Yeah, a lot of my initial clients have come through referrals, through me being out there networking. I am a natural introvert, so it does require me to flex and push myself. But as we're scaling, I realize that that is an intense amount of pressure to put on myself. And so this last, I guess half of the year has been all about increasing our business development pipelines. And so we're spending a lot of time focusing on our online marketing strategy. But believe it or not, like I said, service based businesses can gain a lot of clients through Legion, from ads from Rising Hire and SEO. So I start to invest a lot in that. We've done some sponsorships at strategic places to get more folks to know about our names. We started including referral bonuses to get some more people to be advocates for us if they've worked with us before. So just doing a lot to incentivize more leads and thinking really proactively about our placement and and how we drive more people into our pipeline.  [00:32:25][73.6]

Keith: [00:32:27] What would you say is the biggest misconception about career coaching? I've heard and I've talked to some folks who, you know, they're like, Well, it's just like therapy for rich people or therapy for high achievers. And, you know, one person I talked to who is a great coach is like, So what? That's great, right? And I appreciate that. He was like, some people sometimes do need to just walk through their problems. It needs to be in a business frame and a business framework for them to understand it. What do you think about that? And then the common misconceptions about people who don't know if they should have a career culture, don't think that they need a career coach?  [00:32:58][31.1]

Angelina: [00:33:00] So this isn't the space I live in. So I have so many loaded thoughts here. So let me just try to give you like one or two. The first thing I would say is a big misconception is that anyone can coach. Realistically, yes, anyone can coach. But let me just, you know, put my ass up there. If they've been trained to coach. When I did my coaching program at NYU, we talked so much about positive psychology around neuroscience, around how to how to change habits and what it requires. And so I think that one big misconception is, you know, I just I'm going to give someone the plan of what I did, and that's really not what coaching is. It's really about having a partner in helping you achieve your goals. And so, for example, in our network of coaches, we only right now work with coaches that have gone through a certifying program because we need them all to have a shared philosophy in how we're approaching clients. That's the first thing. The second thing I think is a big misconception is that a coach will give you just a quick answer.  [00:34:06][66.2]

Keith: [00:34:08] So the answer.  [00:34:09][1.0]

Angelina: [00:34:10] Or right or. Yeah, exactly. I have a job interview tomorrow like help me nail it. And that again, is really more of a counseling thing, like how I would say a coach would approach. Helping you prepare for the job interview is more let's look at what's happened. How have you approach interviewing in the past? What comes up for you when you're in a job interview that makes you pour water all over yourself or fumble on your words? Not like where is your structure for how to use this 30 minutes with your. That's not that's a different service, right? Realistically? Well, those would be two that I focus on. I can tell you one big misconception about me is everyone thinks that I'm doing 1 to 1 coaching, and the reality is I'm a business development focused CEO of a scaling company. And so while I'm quoted, I am trained as a coach. I'm featured in many press outlets with coaching advice and obviously very ingrained in the space. I have, again, almost 30 coaches. I'm not practicing on a day to day.  [00:35:16][65.7]

Keith: [00:35:17] And that was one of the big reasons why I did want to talk to you. Right When Chris made that introduction, I was like, okay, cool, sheer scale this to a business because I think a lot of people get into the coaching thing and it's a life change for them to be able to do that 1 to 1. And it's amazing and it's impactful. And my friends who do it, I'm like, You're a changed person and I see the value that you're getting from helping others. But then when Chris introduced us, I was like, Oh, she scaled this and like that. I haven't seen a lot. So I'd love to talk a little bit about the difference in your day to day of being that CEO to, again, high achieving folks who are coaching and doing this and how you how you have to kind of interrelate to them to kind of continue to scale your business.  [00:35:57][40.1]

Angelina: [00:35:58] Yeah. One of the things I'll say is I've used executive coach myself.  [00:36:02][3.6]

Keith: [00:36:04] As a coach. That was I was going to ask that directly. Okay.  [00:36:06][2.2]

Angelina: [00:36:07] Yeah, I won for the last ten years and it is not one of the coaches that works for me only because that would be a conflict. But you know, I would say I would go through coaching with any of the coaches that we hire. So that's one because I think growing a scaling business has changed me in so many ways. It is one. Just the transition from corporate to running a business takes a lot out of you. It's a lot of investment in a very different way. It is the way you eat, it is the way you live. It is you pay your rent and that can be really high pressure sometimes. I also found that early on I was personalizing it way more than I ever had, personalize anything at work. If I didn't get a contract, am I a failure? It's not growing fast enough. Am I an imposter? So it took a lot of work for me, one to really begin to separate that again the way I could incorporate. The other thing is running a business with one person myself versus running a business with eight people versus running a business with 50 people is all really different. Like even just operationally, it's different and it's required me to continue to shift and grow in ways I didn't know I had in me. And so for that reason, having a strong support system is really important. I have like actually now I have an official board of advisors and I have an unofficial board too, right? So I have, yeah, five amazing thought leaders, Chris being one of them and professionals. Former CEO, current CEO, venture capitalist, EVP at Discovery Networks, a bestselling author and the space leader. So I have all these folks who help consult with me on just great business strategy and decisions that. And outside of that, I have my executive coach. I have my therapist. I have my friend circle that's there with me to help. Even just with some of the confidence pieces that I have, my family and all of that I think just plays into giving me what I need so I don't crash and burn. So that's really important.  [00:38:21][134.0]

Keith: [00:38:22] That is. Yeah. And it's such an important statement and it's such an important part of it, right? Because talk to so many people who say it's lonely at the top, right? Like, you get up to the certain level and you don't have that friend group or support group that has been there before. Right. And and then you look around you like there's nobody who looks like me. There's nobody that is from the same background as me. And so it's so important to have that board of directors. It's so important to have that group that you can share those things with and confide in and make it happen. I love asking this question near the wrap up. If we were to catch up in a year from now, what do you hope to be most proud of with the company? With yourself?  [00:38:56][34.0]

Angelina: [00:38:58] Yeah. If we catch up a year from now, I hope to be most proud of being a top competitor. Where my company's name is up there with Korn Ferry or replacing some of their contracts at Fortune 500 companies or placing better up. And I will say, you know, is that aggressive? No. In a year from now, that's where I hope to be. I hope for us to be an eight figure business, but not because it's just the financial goal, because I want us to be driving that much opportunity in terms of building inclusive teams for corporate. I want us to have really worked on how much more we share some of the impact that we're having. That's the place that I hope will get to and to continue just driving this impact being even more present in the thought leadership space of where we're going in the future of work and how to create better workplaces.  [00:39:59][61.3]

Keith: [00:40:00] It's fantastic. I love the clarity in that answer. How can people find out more about this? We coach get in contact with you. Get in contact with the team.  [00:40:06][6.0]

Angelina: [00:40:07] Yeah, absolutely, go to www.csuitecoach.com.  [00:40:08][0.6]

Keith: [00:40:17] All right, great. And we'll give Chris's full name shout out Chris Genteel. He's probably going to be a guest on the show in a couple of weeks. Chris, if you listen to this far, there's a shot to do it. This is this is so fun. I really enjoyed our conversation. Thank you so much for being on the podcast.  [00:40:31][14.4]

Angelina: [00:40:32] Thank you. Thanks so much, Keith.  [00:40:32][0.0]

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