2208 - Embracing Growth How Today’s Founders Can Thrive in a Fast-Paced World with Andrew Poles

0:05Hey there, thoughtful listener. Are you looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, influencers, influencers, and clients? Well, I've had private conversations with over 2 ,000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from. I've got a free video you can watch with no opt-in required where I'll share the exact steps necessary to be 100 % inbound in your industry over the next six to eight months with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for over 15 years and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies. Just head to upmyinfluence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high-ticket sales appointments.

0:51Also, don't forget, the thoughtful entrepreneur is always looking for great guests. Go to upmyinfluence.com and click on podcast. I'd love to have you.

1:05With us right now, it's Andrew Pohl's. Andrew, you are the founder and CEO of Andrew Pohl's Executive Coaching, and three times founder yourself, and you coach founders to master leadership so that they can thrive in business and life. Can't wait to talk about that. But before we do, Andrew, what are you currently doing for fun or what have you been watching, reading, listening to that you're kind of geeking out on? So I'm a, I'm a big fan of having obsessions. I think there are some sessions in life that are healthy. Uh, and I am currently obsessed with mountain biking. So I'm currently training for a hundred mile mare ultra marathon mountain biking race in Leadville, Colorado.

1:49That's taking place in August. You're doing Leadville. You're doing the Leadville ultra. I am. Yeah. Oh my gosh, dude. That is, that is that series. So I, I've run some marathons and I forget who whose book it was that he'd born to run Christopher McDougal, the Tata Mara tribe and all of that. And I'm, Oh God. I, or God, he just had so many ultra, ultra, the ultra Dean Karnasas. No, not Dean Karnasas. Who am I thinking of? Anyway, I'll think of it later. Ultra marathon, man. That is amazing. Tell me for folks who don't know what that entails can you describe it and so it's in my case in particular the location yeah so Leadville Colorado has a base elevation of about 10 ,500 feet so when you start the race you're at 10 ,000 plus feet and you go about 105 miles in the Colorado Rockies climbing descending climbing descending so you climb about 13 ,000 vertical feet on a bike on mountain biking trails and gravel trails.

2:53Oh my God, my quads are already burning just listening to that. You have to be a real masochist. It's probably going to take me somewhere between 10 and 12 hours, depending on how I'm feeling on the day of the race, to complete it. Now, so that's a century ride. So are you not doing where you have to run the marathon? No, no. For me, it's just the mountain biking, yeah. Oh my goodness. Wow. Wow. And there are people who do it by foot, as you know. that usually takes people like 30 hours, 35 hours, 40 hours. Those people to me are crazy. Like some people think what I do is crazy. Those people are crazy to me.

3:29Yeah. And I was, it was Dean Karnasas who wrote the book ultra marathon man, and just had so many stories of these, you know, folks doing these just insane, um, ultra marathon events, you know, where they're running a hundred miles or, you know, again, kind of full, uh, full Ironman stuff as well. But, um, what do you do? What, like, what is your training regimen? Like as you're starting to get to like the three to five days before the event, and then what do you do afterwards? Like, I mean, that's gotta be some serious recovery work that you have to do. Yeah. Well, you know, you, you taper down in the two weeks before the race.

4:08So you're, you're knocking down your volume of training and then the second week. So the five days before you're knocking down your volume and the intensities, you're just trying to keep your body warm, but not wear it down at all. And I will be acclimating at a friend's house in Santa Fe, which is at a base elevation of 7 ,000 feet for the three weeks beforehand. So that I only have to make the jump from 7 ,000 to 10 ,000. So it won't be as big a hit to my system. afterwards i'll tell you this will be my third ultra and i will tell you one thing i've learned is do not travel the day after the race because your body is so beat up yeah that stuffing your body in a car you know for an extended period of time because i'll be driving for 15 hours is the worst thing you could possibly do so i will take the day after to do like probably some epsom salt baths yeah and stretching and you know just chilling out and then i'll go home the day after Smart, real smart.

5:02Well, Andrew, let's talk about the work that you do. Tell me about your impact in the world and who you serve. So I serve two different types of founder. One is founders of Silicon Valley style startups. And mostly those people are in either technology, like medical technology or in software. And that's a special section of my practice. I love those men and women who are out to disrupt a category, to grow something that scales. Everyone's going for what's known as the unicorn company, a company that gets a billion dollar plus valuation. So I have clients in that niche. And then I also have a soft spot in my heart for entrepreneurs who own small businesses.

5:46My first time as a founder, that's what I started. I started a small business in retail when I was a single dad back in the 90s. And I know how hard that is. So I also serve those groups of men and women who own small businesses. All right. So in the culture of kind of the, I don't want to say tech bro, but, you know, the tech culture, tech entrepreneurial culture. Yeah. As a coach, what are some things that you find that are pretty common? Because obviously, again, you've worked with traditional entrepreneurs, maybe just starting a local business in their small town. And then there's kind of the tech culture, which is kind of a unique subculture in and of itself.

6:24And I think lampooned very well, not too inaccurately in shows like Silicon Valley and others. Yeah, yeah. But what are your observations? Oh, and by the way, your microphone, if you could tip it back just a little bit. I'm getting a lot of popping. Yeah, it's like a little popping peas or whatever. Is that better? Just a little bit further away, actually. Oh, further away. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Okay, cool, cool, cool. All right, so back to the tech culture. Yeah. Yeah. So I think one of the things that differentiates that kind of a founder from, say, your small business owner is that typically those people are raising capital to launch their businesses.

6:59So right from the get-go, you either have angel investors, which are friends and family, fools, most of them, because most of these things don't go as well as people think. But then also you have venture investors. So you have this group of people who are watching what this founder is doing, and they are hoping, intending, expecting a return on their investment. So that puts a level of pressure on that founder beyond, let's say, a small business owner who's bootstrapping something that doesn't take much capital at all to start is experiencing. So that is something that is different. And those investors have expectations and different experiences with companies that they want to suggest or impose on the founder.

7:37So that's a push-pull relationship they have to deal with. Also, the pace at which companies in that sector need to grow is so high. So, you know, if you have this limited amount of cash to get your business to be sort of like either, if not self-funding through profits, which is not really the goal, or at least to a point where you can, everyone can see, hey, this is the product the market wants and we want to scale it, then you have this limited cash runway. So you have to make things happen so fast to try to protect the amount of cash runway you have. You have that additional pressure. If you put all that on someone for whom this is their first rodeo, so a first-time founder, usually people who, Josh, decide to be founders are people who are very, very intelligent.

8:22They're super strong individual performers. So up to that point in their life, they have been in roles where they kind of self-managed. And now their job is to empower other people to be great performers and to create a culture and a team and business processes. and a lot of that goes beyond their experience because they've never had to be managed. So there's this enormous gap now, skill gap, they have to cross. In some cases, it's skills. In some cases, it's mindsets, et cetera, frameworks. And it's all under the pressure of getting to make everything go fast. So it's a pressure cooker situation.

9:00That is a unique situation that first time founders find themselves in. And if you contrast that with small business owners, it's really a different world. I mean, a lot of the same skills have to be learned, but the environment in which you're working is extremely different. Yeah. Does that answer your question? Yeah, I love it. Love it. You know, Andrew, I'm curious about your take on timing as well. So as of when we're recording this, there's a couple of big factors, I think, that are happening in the business world. One is just some systemic chaos, I think. I don't want to get too specific on that, but there are some systemic, chaotic things going on right now.

9:44And also, you know, we already had, you know, this impending disruption brought about by technology and particularly AI, which is exciting, but it is still disruptive. Which is, like I said, it's good for some folks, but, you know, there's change afoot. Yep. All right. So my question is, these two particular factors or maybe others that you're experiencing, how are you advising maybe what you're hearing from your clients during this time? Yeah, so it's really different in technology versus in physical technology versus software technology. Obviously, in software technology, everyone's eye is on how well are you incorporating and leveraging AI?

10:37Is your tool an AI native tool? Are your processes leveraging AI? Because you can now start a company with way fewer people and you can develop a software product so much faster than you could a year ago. because of how good AI has gotten at writing code. So that is a game changer for the startup ecosystem because people can now raise a much smaller pre-seed or seed series to get their companies off the ground and test their product. Whereas with physical technology products, for example, I have a client who has a medical technology product that delivers a kind of treatment called transcranial magnetic stimulation, for example.

11:15So it's having great, great success with treating depression and other kinds of psychological diagnoses like those. So they have to manufacture this product. And the uncertainty with regard to the tariff situation is making it very hard for them to make good decisions. Because why? They have to decide, so where should they be sourcing these materials from? And what part of the world's sort of supply chain should they be bringing it through? And every time the tariffs change, it changes the financial impact of their strategy. So for them, the uncertainty, it's very challenging to coach someone as to how to deal with that because, you know, businesses need to be able to project out into the future what their costs will be, etc.

11:55So it is very challenging, Josh. And I wish I could tell you that, you know, I have some sort of silver bullet for people who are trying to figure out where should I locate my manufacturing facility? Should I move it out of China and put it in India? Is that the way to go? And it seems like a good bet, but, you know, things could change on a dime. Things could change tomorrow. Yeah, really challenging. By the time this airs, this conversation might seem very old timey. Exactly right. That's the pace at which we're moving right now. Andrew, your website is andrewpolls.com. Tell me for folks, by the way, again, a compliment.

12:30You are a great LinkedIn follow. Oh, thank you. I'm certain that there's a number of other ways that folks can engage with you or you of resources that our friend who's listening might do next after hearing this conversation? Yeah, I think the best two ways to engage with me are go to my website. There's a lot of content there. Just go to andrewpools.com on the landing page. You can sign up for my newsletter. You can sign up to have a free consultation with me to look at your business if that's something you would like some insight on to help you move down the road to pace. And then if you want to have a conversation with me, the best place to do that is on LinkedIn.

13:08Because, you know, I do all my own communications on LinkedIn. So you can start up a conversation with me there. I love it. andrewpols.com. And then we have your not only that we have your LinkedIn link in the description alone. So we've we've put the links friend who's listening to us right now right in front of you just couldn't open up your podcast app and you can connect with Andrew. Andrew, it's been a great conversation. Thank you for the impact that you have in the world right now. And any parting words to all business owners and leaders listening right now, if you're speaking to a group of CEOs, how would you close this up?

13:46Well, I think this would be my parting thought. And man, if we could double click on this, that's great. And if we don't have time, I'll do my best to encapsulated in sort of like a pithy final statement, Josh. But the reason why I picked the sectors I did is because the people who start companies, whether they're small businesses or Silicon Valley style startups, it's because they have some kind of a dream. They have some kind of a vision of some way that they can impact the world, impact a market. And it takes a lot of boldness. It takes a lot of chutzpah, as we say in Yiddish, to not just have a dream, but to And not only act on that dream, but to leverage everything you've got to try to make that dream a reality.

14:30And one of the things I would like to leave people with about that is that if that's who you are, if you're one of those people who's acting on that dream, and you're really committed to success of that, obviously, it's important to remember that the arc of the development of your business and the arc of your personal and professional development follow a perfectly parallel track. so when your personal or professional development gets stopped or stunted in some way it slows down your company and when your company gets stuck with something it will slow down your growth when you don't find your way through it so the biggest idea i think i could leave people with is that the best way that i have found to help people succeed and fulfilling on these bold bold dreams is to like i that obsessively take on, get obsessed about not just business and how to be a great business person, but get obsessive about how to be a great leader, not just in your business, but in your life.

15:28Because every piece of leverage you get as a father, as a mother, as a co-founder, as a manager of people, every piece of leverage you get personally will translate into a multiplier in the growth of your business. And vice versa, The converse is also true, so you can't afford to neglect either one. If I were going to leave people with one thought, it would be my gratitude for taking on their vision and my suggestion that they become obsessive about managing both tracks. Love it. Andrew Poles, trusted coach for clients at Charles Schwab, NASA, Dell, Lion, and many, many others. Thank you so much for joining us.

16:10Again, your website, andrewpoles.com. Andrew, thank you. Great to be with you, Josh. Thank you.

16:45one another as thoughtful leaders. And as I mentioned at the beginning of this program, if you're looking for introductions to partners, investors, influencers, and clients, I have had private conversations with over 2000 leaders asking them where their best business comes from. I've got a free video that you can watch right now with no opt-in or email required where I'm going to share the exact steps necessary to be 100 % inbound in your industry over the next six to eight months with no spam, no ads, and no sales. What I teach has worked for me for more than 15 years and has helped me create eight figures in revenue for my own companies.

17:26Just head to upmyinfluence.com and watch my free class on how to create endless high ticket sales appointments. Make sure to hit subscribe so that tomorrow morning, that's right, seven days a week, you are going to be inspired and motivated to succeed. I promise to bring positivity and inspiration to you for around 15 minutes every single day. Thanks for listening and thank you for being a part of the Thoughtful Entrepreneur Movement.