#301 Navigating Growth, Decision-Making, and the Startup Mindset with Jodi Hume

0:00:02 - Mehmet
Hello and welcome back to a new episode of the City of Show with Mamet. Today, I'm very pleased to have with me joining me from the US, Jodi Hume. Jodi, thank you very much for joining me today. The way I love to do it and the audience know by now is I keep it to my guests and to use themselves, because I have a theory the best one who can introduce themselves is themselves. So the floor is yours. 

0:00:22 - Jodi
Great. 

So I'm Jodi Hume and I am a third generation entrepreneur, so I have been around entrepreneurial conversations and decisions since I was a little kid. 

But I and then I spent 16 years with an architecture firm as their COO as we grew from eight people up to almost 50 people, and so I got to be in all the decisions around that. But for the last 15 years I have been doing facilitation of leadership conversations and what is now what started off as coaching but is now something that I refer to as decision support for entrepreneurs and founders who are navigating both growth and then, ultimately, acquisition, and so it's a blend of like there's some coaching in there, there's some advising, little bit of consulting here and there where it makes sense, and then a lot of something that I would call business therapy if that was such a thing. I'm not a therapist, but business is uniquely daunting from a personal development and emotional and energetic regulation, as well as the cognitive toll of it, and that kind of been diagram of all those things together is is like the space I love to to play in. 

0:01:32 - Mehmet
Very much. You know things that I love to talk about. 

0:01:38 - Jodi
Are we going to nerd out on stuff here? 

0:01:40 - Mehmet
Yeah, exactly. So the first thing usually I am always curious to know so what was the driver for you to shift or to do this transition from, you know, architecture firm to providing these things? And, to be honest with you, you know, like coaching people is not easy because you need to do a lot of listening yourself and then you need to so but I'm sure you had kind of a motivation or a purpose. So if you can just share that with us, yeah, so yes and no. 

0:02:13 - Jodi
So here's the funny thing my entire life I have been this like interesting blend of like left brain and right brain. I started off as an engineering major in college and then I switched to psychology and sometimes people say, well, howard, like that, that was a big jump. I'm like is it really? Because engineering ultimately is, and psychology are both about figuring out why something works or doesn't work. It's that it's just teasing a part of the variables and reverse engineering things and solving problems and getting to the bottom of a thing. So they both play in my brain in the exact same way. 

And so then when I was with the architecture firm, there were a lot of direct business things I was in charge of. I I never meant to go there in the first place, I just took a job right out of college, actually as the receptionist at first, and then they made me the marketing director and I discovered very quickly or maybe not so quickly, like discovered over the years that I am extremely good at making things better. I think I knew that part already, like I kind of revamped marketing and got that machine rolling. The part I learned about myself there was that once something is is better and it's operationalized and it's working. I am not the person to keep it going Like. That is not the magic that I bring to the world. I am really, so. I would move on to making other things better, and something I think we do a lot is you encounter a weakness. You think, oh, I need to get better at that. Because of the way they were structured there. I was really blessed with the fact that, like when I got bored with that, when it wasn't for me anymore, I was able to hire somebody. They allowed me to hire somebody else to do that, and I took over. I revamped the finances, and then I redid this, and that's how I became. 

Coo was just following that path of where the energy was for me, and when that energy left I mean at the time, that was a gift from them. I learned through that, though, that that is actually an incredibly valuable and strategic entrepreneurial skill of following where your energy is. It's don't write it off as like a indulgent thing. It is a sign of where your magic, where your superpowers really are, and finding ways to get other people to do the other things, and along that way, while I was being COO, I did have this unnamed unofficial role of the one of the principles used to jokingly call me the Oms Budzman. I was the person that handled all of that smushier, personal, like we didn't even know the word coaching, but like the people stuff in the office and this kind of glue that kept it all together, and so I was getting to use like both these sides of my brain kind of brain and the heart is more almost we were talking about like the coaching listening, but interestingly and this leads up to to where I made the shift. 

So one of the things under my purview was the IT stuff and I would do the most base level IT troubleshooting before we recall our actual IT guy. And if you've ever done IT troubleshooting, it is all about isolating the variables. You know, first you swap out the cable and you're like, okay, it's not the cable, maybe it's the network card, and so you'd swap that out or you'd log into the different profile. That skill set of isolating the variables, it's exactly the same skill set I use when I am facilitating or when I am working one on one with an owner to try and get to the solution of a thing or understand what the problem is. It's the exact same thing, and so I started off taking facilitation training through Hopkins because I wanted to do that. 

Our clients at the time needed that, and so I was looking for a new thing and we had grown to be like 40 people and I was out of things to fix, which was a bummer because I loved that company and I didn't necessarily want to leave, but the gum was losing its flavor for me of the actual work that I was doing. To answer your question is like I loved the company but I didn't. I needed a new thing, and so I took the facilitation and training and then coaching training and I ended up doing both for about seven or eight years. I did them on the side. They were fine with it, and then ultimately, that just became very clear that that was the work I needed to be doing in the world and not being at the architecture firm. So I made a very gradual jump. Some people quit their job and start their company. That was not for me, because that also happened to coincide when I had my two children, and so it was just a good way to kind of make a very long, slow transition. 

0:06:45 - Mehmet
Absolutely. You know, I love to hear these stories because, at the end of the day and we're going to talk about, like some of this stuff you know, to show people that you know there's no single path to do something right? 

0:07:00 - Jodi
No, In fact, I just spoke to some high school students and I told them like there is not a single thing that I get paid to do right now that I even knew existed until I was like 30. I couldn't have charted a course towards where I am and I am in the dead center of the work I should be doing in the world. And I didn't even know this world existed when I was 18, 20, 25, 28. 

0:07:25 - Mehmet
So, jodi, you work with a lot of founders right On my show. 

You know there's one specific, I would say, category of these founders that I like to give them more, you know, attention, which are the first time founders. 

So from my discussions you know with all my guests like whether they were on the technical side, the business side, and even you know the coaches and the leaders that I had the chance and I was honored to talk to them what I found out is, once you learn it like if you are like second time, third time founder, of course you're going to make mistakes, of course you're going to have to have a mentor, coach, whatever, but the first time founders are, you know, the ones who are like you just drop that middle of nowhere and they have to figure out things. So from your experience working with a lot of founders, and you know, having your experience, what do you say? Their major challenges are usually and you know maybe it's like I'm not trying to make it a loaded question, but if you can also dissect you know, for each one of these challenges what could be, you know the best path or way to overcome this challenge. 

0:08:45 - Jodi
Yeah. So when you say their biggest challenge, I'm going to skip over some of the obvious ones that people hear about the most because, like, obviously you know market fit and like getting clients, like the sales, like those things. Everybody knows those are challenges and there's a million resources for that. I want to really highlight some of the things that maybe people hear less about, especially because one of my frustrations in the world, and part of the reason that I do this work, is that there's this weird taboo in business where you know, in a very large number of the places that you hear people talking about their experience of starting, growing, running, selling a company. 

You only hear their success stories. You know, certainly, as they're growing it, when you meet them out somewhere, they're going to tell you everything that's going fantastically. They're going to tell you we're killing it, we got this client. Like you have to. You have to go out and present this like this is what's working. It's a requirement as an entrepreneur in a lot of ways. But usually the only time you hear the here's where we thought it was all going to end, here's where we skidded off the rails and went into the ditch, like usually you will only hear those on the path to them, them telling you the great success story on the end and that's lovely, but it doesn't. It doesn't really help people find themselves in the moment and it's a weird. It's a weird metaphor, but I think of it the same way as, like my grandmother grew, you know, was born like 1920 and no one told her about puberty. So like when she got to that point in the world, like she thought she was dying. And I feel like a lot of that is like that for first time. 

Founders, there's so much they don't see in other founders journeys that when it happens to them they think they're broken or not cut out to be a founder. Like their company's failing and I'm like, oh no, dude, that's just what happens when you have you know. Like that's what happens when you hire your first couple of people. Or that's what happens when you get around like 10 to 12 people this starts to happen. Or like 18 people, this starts to happen. So there's all these like business puberty things. So that's one lesson in and of itself is do not suffer alone. Find somewhere where you can hear from other people about like is this me or is this just what happens? So finding other ways and places where people will be candid with you, and sharing your own experiences for other people so that you would take it takes a village to do a lot more than raise a child, and finding those connections and community is super important. 

Leadership Leadership it's lonely at the top. It should not be lonely at the top. That is one of the biggest mistakes you can make in business is being lonely, because isolation causes indecision, it causes all sorts of things and it causes the mental health issues that founders are prone to have. Which leads me to my second point. Do not, do not feel paid, treat it as an culprit in business and in business, overstep your energetic and emotional regulation those things get. 

There's a lot of talk about burnout and burnout's super important to avoid. I'm not gonna poo poo avoiding burnout but because of the nature of like hustle culture and sort of like the romanticized versions of startups and like you are gonna work very hard and be very tired and be very exhausted and frustrated and all those things. But by the time you're talking about burnout you are way past the point, like the part where this is from a neuroscience standpoint, what your brain needs to be cognitively optimized is to not be overwhelmed, to not be exhausted, to not be energetically hijacked Like the. I think what people don't understand is all of the things you need to be to be a really high functioning founder. Those executive functioning, like prioritizing and strategizing and decision-making and all those things are executive functioning. Energetic and emotional regulations are prerequisites to that part of your brain being able to function. So it is not some smushy like self-care thing. It is a like an Olympic athlete level strategy to manage your energy and your emotions. 

And the best founders the ones I've had, who have sold their companies to Google and to whatever. They absolutely prioritize those things in a shameless and relentless way, because they know that's what optimizes their cognitive capacity. And so do not step over those things. And that includes, as I alluded to before, your energy, like your excitement, and that's not to say that you're gonna. You're not gonna have to do things you really don't wanna do, but you have to pay attention to follow the juice. If everyone in your company is working on their highest and best use and the stuff that really gives them energy, your company will go much further than if everyone's slogging. 

0:13:57 - Mehmet
There are a couple of points that, just when you mentioned them, something sparked in my brain. So the first thing is burnout, and you talked about the hustling culture and at the same time, we see the stories and this applies not only for founders, it applies everywhere. Like you should be also like kind of resilient, but, as a founder, how I can know and burnout by the way, we had, I think, lost in just one episode, just about burnout? Right, it's something very dangerous. So how I can know as a founder, that actually, okay, hold on, I think I'm doing this too much. I should take a break, step back, think about it and then come back. 

And because you know, jodi, what happens sometimes, because of the excitement that you talked about and because all the way we I like this term we romanticized the whole startup story and people they think, if we can go to this route, this is what's gonna happen, which is, I don't think it's a destiny, because they can do it in different way. So when is the moment that they need really to say, hey, I need to stop, I need to reflect, I need to maybe go talk to someone? 

0:15:21 - Jodi
Yeah. So the things that I think are most obvious but most missed that didn't make sense, but we'll in a second the most regular probably is a better way to say it and most missed are things like indecision, or spinning your wheels or self-doubt, Like anything that is slowing you down. I actually think of it so, like here, in which snows, here it's very muddy sometimes in the spring, Anytime that if you've ever been in a place, any place where your car is spinning wheels, if you've ever been in that experience, the thing you have to you don't just keep hitting the gas. That just digs you deeper into the thing. Anything that is causing that kind of wheel spinning or repetitive can't get out of a thing. What you need in that moment is traction. You have to find some way to get traction with the thing. That usually, or brain standpoint, requires like stepping away. 

So there's a couple of things to keep in mind here, because resiliency is not an after the fact. You don't run yourself into the ground and then try to become resilient. Resiliency is a discipline practice of investing in your store of like what you have to, like your reserve to pull from when you are feeling exhausted. And I mean I know we saw a lot of this after COVID. People kind of run through their stores and so they would just get more irritated more quickly or they'd get tired faster, and it was because we kind of depleted those stores of what you kind of lean into. But so a couple of things. There's some ways you can get further back into the cycle of depletion that you can go, the more resilient you will be, because the half-life of that resilience lasts longer. 

So there's some really basic things like is well proven scientifically. 

Like our brains are not designed to marathon throughout the day, we are designed to sprint, and so what that means is if every 60 minutes, 90 minutes, you take even a five minute break, and that doesn't mean like go play on your phone, but just walk around the house once, stand up and do jumping jacks, like go sit outside and close your eyes and listen to the birds for a minute, Just some kind of period at the end of a sentence with a space before you start, the next thing will improve the half-life of that glucose which this prefrontal cortex part of your brain is responsible for all the things you needed to do to grow your company, and that part of your brain gobbles up glucose faster than the rest of it, like tied together. 

And you see this, even if you're not a founder anyone who gets up in the middle in the morning and says I'm going to eat all the right things and drink water and have all these wonderful habits and you're pretty good at that throughout the day and then there comes a point like late afternoon, going into evening, and you go home and you're like, no, I'm just gonna eat all the cookies and potato chips and have a drink. That is not. There's a reason for that. It's because your prefrontal cortex is also in charge of impulse control and if you have burned through your glucose throughout the day by the end of the day, you don't have the reserve for impulse control, and so it just gets harder in the evenings, and so by doing little sprints throughout the day and taking some breaks, you can get further without losing some of that cognitive capacity. 

And that also applies to decisions, like if you can reduce your decisions because that part of your brain is in charge of decisions. So even that's why they say don't pick up your phone and start deciding. Email, email, email, yes, no, yes, no, cause that's deciding and you're burning that glucose on what is quantifiably a pretty low level decision versus getting up and doing something that really creates progress first with that part of your brain, which also I won't totally nerd out on the brain thing here. This also ties into dopamine, like being really conscious of your dopamine. 

I don't fully understand the science of this just yet, but I know it to be true and I've experienced it. Where you get your dopamine first in the morning will determine what your brain reaches for throughout the day. And so the two big things here is if you pick up your phone and do social media or get those like fast clicks of dopamine, the rest of your day you'll kind of be chasing that junk food version of dopamine, whereas if you get up and do something the checks of productivity box even like unloading the dishwasher or whatever, like something that is that is progress oriented. Your brain will reach for that throughout the day and that is more the energy you need as a founder. 

0:20:17 - Mehmet
That's very important and, yeah, I agree with you about you know the point of how to get the dopamine. I used to do it the wrong way before until I learned from some books and some articles. 

0:20:27 - Jodi
Trust me, I have. Like the reason I'm so solid on this is I have personally tested it a bunch of days Like I will wake up and just like play on TikTok for half an hour and then see how my day goes, versus if I wake up and when I say half an hour, I'm like yeah right, half an hour. Once you start you're like shaw, shaw, shaw, shaw, shaw. 

But, it's a bummer. Like I hate it because like I'm like okay, I just I have now experienced with like a reliable set of statistics that it's impossible to ignore that it does change the texture and flavor of my day based on what I do first, and so that's just a discipline, is like I don't have some like really rigorous morning routine. I'm not that person, but I do reliably make a very conscious choice of what I do first. And I did want to add one last thing to that list of like things to do this one I know this one feels like so hard, but if you could just trust me on this one when it feels like the very last thing you can do is take a break and, for instance, go walk in nature or something like that. Like I really push my entrepreneurs into the. 

I don't know if you've seen the seven kinds of rest, because they're bad at regular rest Like these are not people who like lay down and chill out, Like they need active rest, and so if you look through the seven kinds of rest, it's also important because there's you don't always need physical rest. Sometimes you need electronic, like technology rest. Sometimes you need social rest If you're not getting the right energy from other people. Sometimes you need creative rest, like Google, like a doodling or taking a walk, when watch out for when it feels like the very last thing you could do is rest or stop and prioritize and take stock and, like when it feels like that's the last thing you could do, trust that that is absolutely the most important strategic thing you could do. That is the sign that that's what you need is when it feels like it's you can't possibly do that and that's so hard, Like I get it. It's hard for me too and I preach it all the time, but much like the dopamine thing, it's just real. That's how you know. 

0:22:38 - Mehmet
Yeah, of course, and I know, jordi, like you, have some psychology background. 

0:22:43 - Jodi
You said you're not a therapist, not a therapist, but I don't know, I was a psychology major and then in the what 30 years since then, I feel like there's a certain number of like articles and books. 

0:22:55 - Mehmet
You read that they should just be like yeah, that counts, you have a degree now, Exactly Now, one of the things you know, and even we discussed it before which causes stress, which is that when they have, I mean, the founder, they have something very important and they need to decide on, and then they feel they are stuck. From your experience. First, what causes this? Because you know, I know that they, in the background, they feel that, okay, we are a startup or agile, I need to take decision very quickly, but at the same time and I've seen people, by the way, who told me that you know what I'm not able to take a decision, and I'm talking about like major ones, I'm not talking about like just as simple things. So, what causes that and how they can overcome this? 

0:23:51 - Jodi
Yeah, yeah, oh gosh, I have to say which things I tell you here. So a couple of things. One it is you kind of have to release the shame about indecision in a startup because you are most often more often than not you are trying to create something or build something that has never existed before. So having a little bit of empathy for yourself around, feeling like you're supposed to know, is actually one of the things that causes indecision, because indecision isn't actually a thing in and of itself. It's like it's kind of the structures you're putting around a decision. That's almost like walls you put around it that make it impossible for you to accept any doors, like the door to walk through. So you kind of have to step back and say, like what is you have to? It's like a metacognition thing. You have to look at your thinking and why you're making the decision. What about the decision? So I'm gonna hit on a couple of things here. One I had a client who was a design professor who said something so profound to me once that I feel like I say it once a week. That he said when his students ask him what's the right font or the best font, he said he tells them. It's so rarely about getting the right font or the best font. You in design, you really just have to make sure you don't have the wrong font. And it's so true. As long as the font isn't distracting or illegible, people aren't gonna notice the difference between this font and this other one that has a tiny bit more of a serif. You just need to avoid having the wrong font and then it's probably fine. 

And in entrepreneurship, especially when you are doing something that's never existed before, whatever part of you imagines that there's some script that's invisible, that you are trying to yet like perform on this script, it's not there. There is no script, there is no map. You are doing improv, so you get a little bit of information and you do with it what you can. And you get a little bit more information and you do with it what you can. That's as close as you get to a right answer. So you kind of have to loosen your grip on imagining that there is a right answer, and so I kind of break it down Over the years. I think of it as like a couple, like three things really, and they all happen to start with C. I actually hate when people have like like an alliteration of their things. It kind of bums me out. They'll start with a C. Didn't do that on purpose. 

What people are most often looking for is clarity, and so some people if you're a verbal processor, you might need to talk a thing through with someone else to get clear what's in your own mind. Internal processors simply don't need that and don't understand why other people do. But if you are a verbal processor and I would just add this layer to this might get harder for you as your company grows if you get especially if you get investors, because sometimes what happens is the people you use to talk things through with. If they become investors, that might start to feel like a harder conversation to have. So you just always have to be aware that if you're a verbal processor, you must have people that you can verbally process with. 

Most of my clients are verbal processors. It's a big part of why my business exists, so sometimes you need that to get clarity. Clarity also comes from information or guidance, so you can find clarity. It's great to ask other people, but one of the reasons I see people get indecisive is way too many advisors, way too many investors, lots of people telling you what to do that can cloud and muddy your perspective. At the end of the day, you know your company better than anyone. You have to get like I value input from a lot of people, but ultimately when I'm listening to someone I am listening for what they know deep inside of them, what they need. So sometimes you need clarity, information to get clarity. 

But it's not usually that indecisiveness, it's not usually that it's one of these other buckets which is either confidence or courage. And the reason I make that distinction is confidence is like oh, it's in there, it's resonant. You can't get clear because there's not enough information to get crystal clear with clarity. So you have to kind of lean into. Okay, I know enough that I have a decent gut feeling that this is the right thing. I've checked with a couple trusted people. They don't see any blind spots, they don't think it's the wrong font. I've done my due diligence to make sure this isn't a terrible mistake and then I'm not missing something huge. I'm just gonna go for it. That's kind of the confidence piece. 

And then there's courage where, for better or for worse, there are gonna be a bunch of times where you don't have a lot of information, not even enough to have a decent sense of confidence. 

No one else can really guide you, because no one else has done this before. They don't know, you can't know, and you just have to lean into this courage to close your eyes, take a deep breath, take action and trust that you will course correct, which is the other last piece about decision that I think we always forget. I think we imagine that like we move a piece on the chessboard and then the game will stay in that shape forever, and that's not how it works. Every action you take will change the entire game and then you will make new decisions, and one of the biggest skill sets you need as an entrepreneur is like course correction, for the decision you made last week or last quarter that didn't work out the way you imagined Doesn't mean it was a wrong decision. It just means that now it needs course correction, and relaxing into that is one of the best things you can do for yourself as a founder. 

0:29:29 - Mehmet
Now I'm gonna ask you this question, Jodi, and this is just me. I love to follow the successful entrepreneurs and even the ones who they have their style. One of the things that I noticed, that sometimes and correct me if I'm wrong on the last point you mentioned the ability to correct the decision if it's wrong, but what I see is and me included, by the way, all of us, I think, by nature we have that ego. Okay, I took that decision. You know what? I will not change my mind because I think I did the right thing. So how? This is critical to remove the ego, especially because you're running a business and maybe some other people's lives are dependent on of course, not in the physical sense depending on your decisions. So how, me as a founder, should I really remove the ego and accept that? Yeah, sometimes I might be able to do mistakes? 

0:30:41 - Jodi
Well, so okay. So I think part of the reason I love working in business is just how often the most profound advice is contradictory to itself. So I'm actually gonna talk to both sides of what you said, because both are true, and that is the art of business is deciding between both ends of what is true. So on the one hand, you know, you said you know, like I made a decision and I'm going to stick with it because I know that it was right. That is actually an important skill of entrepreneurship. 

You will, in order to create something that's never existed or that you are going to have to go against the grain of people who can only see what they've seen before in that moment and people have varying degrees Like there are some people who will only ever see that. Then you might have an investor who does have that like visionary capacity, but you just can't quite see what you can see yet in this like crazy vision you have of what you want. So you cannot judge by what other people are saying it's the right or wrong decision. There are absolutely times you have to be like everyone is telling me this is wrong and I have to keep going. That's how you get to new places, and so that's important. But what you're talking about is slightly different, or could be. Where you need to loosen the ego is where the evidence of what you actually care about and what matters to you and your company as progress is telling you that it's the wrong thing. So make up a scenario I make a decision about something because I think it's what my customers need, and none of my customers are agreeing that they want that, and I hold tight to that decision because I just don't want to be wrong. Well, that's a really fast way to tank a company, like when you ignore the data, when you ignore the things that actually rate whether you're doing the right thing. 

Now, slight nuance to that is, if people need to be educated because they don't know they need something yet, then you have to back it up. Then you have to back it up to well, what are they cognizant to? What you know? What do they care about? What will they say yes to now, so that I can move them towards that thing? Like it's like what's the thing I'm selling, what they want, and then give them what they need, like there is that aspect to it a little bit, but to your point, holding needing to be right is not a helpful skill in entrepreneurship, because everything about it is is like the space shuttle. I read one time and then I talked to an actual rocket scientist about this, it is true. So like the space shuttle or anything they send into space, it's never actually there's no point at which it is actually on course, like they are just constantly course correcting it. So the minute they like it to the left, it's, it's off course and it's just an issue of, like, how long do they wait before they get back to the right some? And that's how they get a thing where it's going. And that's kind of what happens in entrepreneurship. 

And you think about how, like, delegating works. I have rarely seen a growing company not do this Like, oh I really, you know I can't. I'm the CEO, I can't have my fingers and everything, so I'm going to let, really let my team run with this, and I've never seen someone make that very important step and then getting to the like, oh my god, it never occurred to me that they do it that way, and now this is off the rest. So I have to, like, pull back and guide it a little bit. They don't want to go back over to micromanaging and that, like, where is this sweet spot where, like, it all works? 

I think what we don't understand sometimes and this is how I help people kind of loosen that grip on being right is those, both, all of those are right, like your brain learns from contrast. So, like you're like, oops, that's not quite right. And then you bounce back every like, oops, that's not quite right. That is how you build neuroplasticity. That's also how you build actual muscles in your body. Interestingly, like when you wobble and you have to like tighten yourself back up. That's how your brain learns the muscle memory of how to like do a thing. So it's less about like I don't think of it as trying to let go of your ego, because I think that's a really tough thing. I think it's more about reframing. 

What right is it like? If you want to think of right, as I chose something and I'm going to put a white knuckle, hold on to it forever, I don't I struggle to see how that's that's not being right. That because it? Because, because the moment it starts not working, you're now wrong, and so you're actually holding tight on to something that's wrong and so it's just being right. You're holding tight on to new data Because, as the data changes, you were right in the moment because that's all the information you had. 

Now you have new information. If you don't update with the new information, you are now holding tight to something that has been proven wrong. And if you've, you know the survival of the survival of the fittest, very like known phrase. I heard someone talking the other day that we think of that as like the most capable, the strongest, the you know who could dominate, she said. But that is actually not what that phrase means. It is it's about fit, it's about adaptability, it is. It is survival of the fittest, the most able to adapt fit to new information and new stimuli. And so that's how I think of of the relationship with being right. 

0:36:20 - Mehmet
And you know, in startups, everything is about, you know, being agile and measuring and seeing you know if things are going well. So do you think you know the? Because first time founders probably also it's the first time for them to be having a role of a leader. So, and you know a leader, you know, and there's a lot of things that are out there, but for me, you know, the leader is someone who listened to what other people are telling. He put his ideas also and then try to lead the team by what he thinks or she thinks is the right way to do it. 

And then you know to your point. When he or she finds out that, okay, there's something wrong. Okay, come back, let's sit as a team and see what we should really do next Now. But this, this skill, the leadership skills or the course, like they need to learn down down the road. But is there anything? Usually you advise, you know your, the people, you consult, you consult to them on. You know what is the leadership style, let's say, or like what are like some of the you know, come and maybe the advice is that they need to listen to to be successful leaders, because it's all about leadership at the end of the day right. 

0:37:49 - Jodi
Yeah, yeah and and there's a lot of stuff that comes up later that I would love to save people from in advance, because it's it is always harder. It's always harder to be harder to course correct things later than it is. Like once things, once threads, have gotten woven into your culture or to your team structure, it's harder to unweave them and it is to just leave them incorrectly in the first place can be done absolutely, but it's just a little harder. So I think one of the most important things is not imagining that leadership is about knowing all the answers, like it is much more about surfacing the right questions and then also involving your team in the decision process of those. So one of the biggest mistakes I see people make, and very early on Again, this is why it's hard very early on you are going to be the generator of the vision and the guidance and the answers, because it's all in your head and and and that will remain the way. You're the one with the vision, like people aren't just going to instantly get your vision and internally be able to make those decisions super early on, but the faster and the earlier that you can be training other people in what you see and how you think and being transparent with that, so that they can get it and develop their own internal GPS. 

Because the frustrations I hear later is everyone always has to come to me. I've told them they can, you know, make choices. Why don't they just make choices but then also being frustrated? Well, they made these choices and it's not what I wanted. Like that, that friction is always there. That is 100% a sign that they can't see what you see, and so this is especially true with visionary people. Like something happens what they don't even realize is like a movie plays in their head, like a decision tree unfolds in their head in like a nanosecond. They're not even always aware how they're weighing the different variables or how they're considering what they're considering, or like how they get to those, those, those things. So how on earth is someone else supposed to be able to understand and and make similar decisions? 

So a couple things I've seen work. This one I drew from a parenting book I was reading one time where it was saying like if you want your kids to, for instance, be able to be patient or handle frustration, things that you are doing in your body, inside your body, inside your body, in your head and they have no idea it's happening. So you need to narrate that, like if you are standing in line at the grocery store and it's really long and you're feeling frustrated, to say to your toddler or five or six year old, like, wow, I'm feeling really frustrated, this is taking so long, I'm going to use this technique to be more patient in this moment. It's just narrating what is happening so that they can be like oh, so that's how you handle, that's how you dig in, dig deep for patients or otherwise, how on earth are they supposed to understand the concept of patients? You say to like you just have to be patient. What does it even mean? What is be patient? And so I have often worked with with especially fast thinking, visionary folks to slow down that movie enough that they can see some of the key frames. They don't have to, they don't have to teach every single frame, but like, what are the decision points so that someone else can start to play that same movie, at least in pieces, like even even one or two key pieces, so to say, like, well, when it comes to this and this, I always prioritize that. Like, if push comes to shove, I decide that you tell me that, then I know and I have the confidence to make that decision and know that I'm not doing the wrong thing, because otherwise you're setting people up to get their fingers slapped, and people don't like to take risk unless they know there's a relative safety to it. So if you can reduce the risk by helping them see what you see, this is also true for bigger corporate decisions, like the more you can involve people in the thought process. This is true for all teams, everywhere, if someone has participated in the decision structure and they don't have to be in every little bit of the way. 

And no, this does not mean decide by consensus. This does not mean everybody gets a say. That is not what I'm talking about. This is making your life easier along the road by giving them some part of the context along the way, even if you just pull out one little snip and kind of have them say like, well, here's what we were thinking about, and they grapple with it in their own brain and then they're with you, whereas if you go through this crazy long decision and I've seen this happen so many times you go through this whole thing either in your own head or just with, like you and a co-founder and you decide a thing and then go try and announce it to people. 

They are only seeing that last bit, so they can't know, like I've seen so many times, where the staff will be like, oh, this is a terrible decision and or it's a terrible option. And what I wanna say is, oh my Lord, you should have seen the other three options that they had, like they were so awful. This one's like glowing rosy, sunshine, rainbows compared to the other choices. But they don't know that, so they have no context. So you're just creating a lot of friction and swimming upstream for yourself. 

If you hold everything really close to the vest, don't operate with transparency as much transparency as you can possibly tolerate for yourself. Again, that doesn't mean you share every little thing of like the sky is falling and we won't be able to make payroll next, maybe not that much, but helping people understand like, hey, when we do these things, it benefits us in this way financially and therefore that has value and we should prioritize it. Then they have that internal GPS to decide with you. So those are some of the biggest things that I think are investing early in a team of people who see what you see and know what you know, and involving them so that you're not, it's not all on you, because if you get to six, eight, 10, 12 people and everyone has to come back to you to check so that they know what to do next, you're going to be absolutely miserable and it will stagnate the growth of your company so quickly. 

0:44:23 - Mehmet
Absolutely great advice, jodi. Now, how a question that also people ask me sometimes, especially first time founders again, I relate to another question later like how early in their startup stages they need to go and start to work with people like yourself, jodi, because sometimes it might be very late, right? So if someone comes to you and they tell you, hey, like we have this problem, I'm sure that you might say, hey, like you're too late, sorry, right? So-? 

0:45:00 - Jodi
No, it's never too late, Mel. I mean, I started to say it's never too late. I don't like absolutes. 

0:45:05 - Mehmet
I like this. You know I'm not testing, but I love people who are optimistic. You know, like you said, so, but of course there should be like a sweet spot. Let's call it this way. 

0:45:16 - Jodi
There is and I would say that like so really early on, you probably don't. I mean, I think you can always there's always value in. I work with startups who are literally just coming up with their idea all the way up through selling like huge companies. So where most of my one-on-one, where the like, the on-call decision support, where I am at their backer, call when they need it, that tends to be a more valuable service when, let's say, there's no magic to this, when you have like 20 people, 30 people, like there's so much going on the random, you're going, you know you're fundraising, you're maybe going through processes to consider exits, like there's a lot more going on and so it definitely makes sense. The thing that really I think you can get from day one you cannot go too early on. This is anything. You need some place Like, for instance, I have a group of SaaS founders and a lot of them are in the very early stages and this is a great place where they get like a little bit of me, but what they really are getting is a I hate that this phrase is so loaded now but like a safe place. 

And again, this is not smushy, this is Seth Godin says, if you have a problem you can't talk about now. You have two problems and you have to have a place where you can lay it all down and be candid and honest and vulnerable about what you're actually grappling with. You have to have that from day one and often that's like friends or family in the beginning. The challenge can be there is that sometimes those friends or family don't have a second question, like they don't understand. So you, like, you need someone and they don't have to be the same person, but you need someone who understands your business. You need someone who understands you. You need someone who is at least cognizant of what's going on in your life, because that absolutely plays in on all this. And you need someone, or some ones, who have been in this experience and so early on being in a round table not a round table that is just simply focused on another place to come and hear best practices and for everyone to say like I'm killing it and here's all the good news. I mean that's great, it serves a certain purpose If you go and you hear the latest speaker on marketing this. Like all those things are necessary, but again, like it's almost like the therapy thing, the group therapy. Interestingly, because it's not always just about problems Like. 

There is a whole side of this that I don't often get to talk about cause it just doesn't come up as often. The other thing that's lacking in not having someone to talk to is actually not having people to get a satisfying and that's the important word there a satisfying high five out of for what you just accomplished. Like I had a client who pulled off a thing in a contract with a company we would all recognize the name of and there was literally no one she could tell that to who. Either it would be a breach of confidence to tell Like so it was just like it was inappropriate to share it, or like she was like well, I could have told my mom, but my mom has no concept of what that took to pull that off. So even if she's like great, she's like I'm not satisfied because and normally those kinds of things she might tell like a CEO friend but because of what the contract was and the NDAs and all that stuff, she couldn't do that. 

So you have to have a place I consider it both ends of real for the really crappy, not fun. I'm not sure that goes all the way to like business hospice, as I call it, like those days where you're like I think I just need to burn it down. You have to have a place where you can talk about those things and you also need a place where you can shamelessly, shamelessly gloat and brag and where you can hear that you are doing a good job. Because that is the other thing that I don't think people realize goes away. People think that founders are constantly getting all this positive validation. That is not the case. More often than not, they are questioning their worth and value and like all the time and people just forget that they also need to hear like, hey, you did a really good job in that presentation to the team. 

No one ever says that. They think they don't need to hear it. So you get that early as you possibly can and build a strong network. Build your village I don't know if I already said this, but like it takes a village to build to, they say it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to grow a company and you building that village early, you can't do that early enough. There comes a point where, maybe having the right kind of advisor People have lots of startup advisors. The challenge is if that person has a horse in your race. That's where it can get really tricky, where you need an objective person somewhere in there, for sure. 

0:50:19 - Mehmet
Like this is really the way you're telling this Judy, like I hope, because this is the energy that I took just having someone to talk to them the way you're doing, and I think they are about to take a major decision. I think it will let them feel a little bit like less stressed Now out of curiosity. Out of curiosity because you've worked with first time founders and all the way to people who are funded and even about to sell their companies. Do you see this problem of especially decision making get less with time because of the experience, or actually, the more the business will grow, more decisions to come and more struggles and challenges from the experience. What did you see in that space? 

0:51:12 - Jodi
So certain things absolutely get easier. I mean like decisions that you grapple with in the beginning, you habituate to, and those decisions sometimes get easier. But a bunch of different things popped into my head when you said that and I'm hoping I can remember all of them. So, first of all, if you are looking for some sort, if you imagine that there will come a point in entrepreneurship where, either from a decision standpoint or from a psychology standpoint like people talk about an imposter syndrome, I'm like if you imagine that goes away just because you reached some point, I'm sorry, like you, probably maybe you shouldn't be an entrepreneur, I don't know. You kind of have to love the grapple, like there's always going to be, because what happens is, yes, you get better at some decisions, but then you have new, bigger decisions and progress often looks like new problems, and that's what you have to love as an entrepreneur. I have a client who will joke. He was like hey, I have new problems. So I guess I'm making progress, because that's just how it goes. Like there was a period, a very short period, where I tried to be someone who runs. I hate running and so I've given that up, but for a while it was all cardiovascular, like if I ran a shamefully low amount of time, I would be so out of breath that I would have to stop. Well, one day I was running and all the tiny muscles around my ankles started stinging and like up my calf and I was like oh, I can now cardiovascularly run far enough that I am encountering the new problem of the weakness of the muscles in my feet. And that is how entrepreneurship works. So you are always going to have new problems and so building your resilience and your I don't know if I could say excitement around like, but your tolerance for and your willingness to embrace it as like okay, this is like. Now I have new problems, this is a new thing to do. So there's absolutely that it does get easier, but also some things get easier. Some things are always hard. But there's also this thing where you will just sometimes like I had a long-term client who's multiple companies this is like his third or fourth startup that he's building to sell. 

He has hired and fired countless people and he did one of the like. He joked like the bat signal calls, like. He was like hey, do you have time this afternoon? I'm like absolutely, that's how my model works. He calls and he wanted to talk through the conversation of letting someone go and I'll be honest, I was a little bit surprised, like even doing all this work and seeing people. So I literally asked him. I said I gotta ask you, like I'm sort of like I know you've done this a bunch of times, I know you actually have a really beautiful way of handling your people, like I really respect how he leads, like why and he explained to me the circumstances about it and as soon as he said it, it made perfect sense. But there were even things that you were already air quotes good at. 

There will be moments or like variables that get added into that soup that change the flavor in a way that all of a sudden you're like oh, oh, wow, this one feels hard and yucky and I always think of it and maybe this is the perfect example. What he needed was not like a class or an article or like best practices from an HR person of how, like all of that is irrelevant. My mom used to use this metaphor of like a filing cabinet or a set of drawers. 

You know if you pull drawers out and you too many, that it will topple and you have to like push them back in, to like reestablish the center of gravity. That is what people need more often than not, when they are feeling unsure or indecisive or just wobbly or unsettled about a thing is you have to help them push in the drawers that shouldn't be pulled out. You have to separate like fears, separate like the facts from like fears and fictions that they're making up, and help them find what's like real and true and that like re-centers them and then they're good and they can go do their thing. But we all need that kind of that does. That never goes away. There's no point at which you will just know and have all the answers. 

0:55:49 - Mehmet
Absolutely, you know, because you don't say, as you mentioned at the beginning, like it's like a kind of a sprint, it's not like a marathon, so it's like a continuous education. And I believe, and you know from what I have watched and listened and read is the successful ones were the ones who were always learning, were always, you know, trying to get their game up. And so, like you know, we covered a lot today and I would like to ask you where, especially first time founder, they can find more about you. 

0:56:28 - Jodi
Yeah, so if you, my website is at thecorecom and so there you can find, you can find information about my one-on-one services. That's also where you can. There's a link there to book a connection call with me. That is, it's like 30 minutes, 45 minutes. I will tell you that is not a sales call. That is not how I handle those. It's I've learned. You know, this is my, this is actually my. 

This is my 20th year of doing this work officially since I first started and I will tell you very, very, very early on I learned the wonderful lesson that, like, when it works, it just works and when it doesn't, I usually know someone who is or like have a resource for the person for whom it is. But that's how you can find out about the group, or just you know. I welcome anyone to book that call and we can have a quick chat and see what they are grappling with and what I would recommend. Because, interestingly, the entire way that I stumbled on this sort of like I don't know it feels like a next evolution of coaching, of this like decision support. 

The on call was because of how many people would call me and want an introductory session, because they thought they needed a coach and I would talk to them and over and over and over again I was like you don't need, you don't need a coach, you don't need a six month program, you don't need an advisor or a consultant. Like you had one issue and now you're clear, go back into your thing, call me later if you want another single session. But I was doing that as like an intro call and all of a sudden I was like wait, this is actually what people need is they just need to get clear. And so, because that's not the most obvious off yourself service, like I just welcome people, like it's half hour, have a chat sometimes. You just need to get clear and then, go about your business so. 

0:58:20 - Mehmet
Absolutely. I love this because, again, they are busy, probably, and they need to act fast and I love the way you name it this way like on call support, right, so it's like the hotline, right, so for business decisions. 

0:58:37 - Jodi
It is. It's like a hotline. My marketing person wanted me to call it Founders Lifeline and I was like, oh, I don't know, I kind of love that, but it's a little bit, it's just on the edge of a little bit cheesy for me. So I'm like I don't think I can do that. But it's on the books, but no absolutely, absolutely. 

0:58:54 - Mehmet
You know like I think it's much needed, so I will make sure I will put the link in the show notes so people can reach out to you, jodi. Thank you again. Really, I enjoyed the conversation. I learned personally, I learned a lot of things from you and this is why actually I do what I do because bringing totally this like yourself, people who are experienced, like yourself, jodi, to share their experience and insights and make the journey for fellow entrepreneurs easier than you know previously it was done so. 

0:59:30 - Jodi
I really appreciate you and your show. You have some wonderful guests. It's a fantastic show. So I really appreciate that you do what you do. It matters. 

0:59:38 - Mehmet
Oh, thank you. That's really a you know, a review from you that I appreciate and this is. You know usually how I end my episode, so this is for the audience. If you discovered this podcast by luck, you know someone sent you here. Thank you very much. I hope you enjoyed it. Please subscribe, and we are on all the podcasting platforms. Share it with your friends and colleagues and, if you are one of the loyal fans who keep coming again and again, thank you very much for your loyalty and I appreciate all the notes that you send me. I appreciate all the emails. I read them all and plus, if you are interested to be on the show, I'm repeat this again and again. You know how to find me. Reach out. If you have something interesting, you want to discuss something related to tech, entrepreneurship and startups, reach out and we can arrange this. Thank you very much for tuning in and we'll have a new episode very soon. Thank you.