E168: How I Coach The Top 0.1% CEO's in Silicon Valley w/Alexis John d'Amecourt

There's this misconception out there that CEOs show some anger sometimes.

You know, they gotta rattle some chains.

And I see it a lot of times with younger CEOs who believe that that's the persona they should have.

And I'm saying, is you know, a lot of times, especially with those tech,

I point out to them that when you get angry with someone, you usually have to go back and apologize.

I've worked with over 80 CEOs, and I watch how the most successful do it there.

And I've never seen any of them go ballistic on people and scream at people to get them to move.

I work with such good people, CEOs who are just really good people.

Four of my first five clients I ever had, I still work with them.

And so I'm watching them grow orgs from 11 people to 50 to 100 to 150.

One of them has 3,500 employees.

Still the same guy.

It's good to see.

Today, I'm excited to welcome Alexis DeMay DeMaycourt, head of coaching at Motri Method and trusted advisors, some of Silicon Valley's most dynamic CEOs and founders.

Alexis has spent over two decades as a three-time founder, C-suite leader, and now as a coach behind leaders at companies like Substack, Agent Layer, Bookseat, and more.

In this episode, Alexis shares a rare inside look at how he helps top executives get unstuck from their biggest problems.

We'll dive into his frameworks for navigating high-stakes decisions, his approach to blending personal and professional growth, and what he's learned from coaching the leader shaping today's tech landscape.

Alexis, welcome to the How Invest podcast.

Alexis, you coached some of the top CEOs and executives on the planet.

Brag a little bit about your clientele and some of their accomplishments.

First and foremost, let me brag about them this way.

They generally care about their colleagues.

They're good human beings.

They are really absolutely smart.

They're absolutely focused.

But I'd say the one thing is that they've really figured out how to balance that focus on product for customers with also being good people

and also balancing having a family.

At Substack, I coach Chris Best, who's the CEO.

Substack is now in the Zeitgeist.

It's everywhere.

And he's still just excited about his kids.

and their performance at school, which he shares.

I'll highlight a third, Sharam Khanan from Eigenlayer.

I've been working with him from the very first day of their startup.

And the best photo I have of him is not the one with all of his engineers there, everyone.

It's him holding his daughter who has the mouse ears on because he got to take her to Disneyland.

And those are good people, and it's nice to work with those good people.

And why would the CEO of Substack or Eigenlayer?

or Book C need coaching and who is coaching really for when it comes to executives?

Now, coaching is

coaching is everywhere.

I think for CEOs, though, it's a little bit different.

It's like, look, CEOs have their exec teams,

but they can't really go to their exec teams with everything.

They have their investors.

And sometimes they go to their investors, and their investors are like, hey, look, I want a 10X return.

They go to their board.

Their board looks at them and goes, that's great.

However, Let me tell you how I used to do this.

And what happens is everyone they go to has an agenda.

agenda and so what i like to say is look i just don't have an agenda with you and two

if you tell me something you're not gonna have that awkward moment of seeing me two hours later at the kit in the kitchen or at by the water cooler and you're like hey how's it going i just told you this thing that's this vulnerable moment i had that i'm working through so i also feel like look um The best athletes in the world have coaching.

I believe that, you know, there are skill sets.

We're building skills.

No one's born a true leader.

No one's born with all the answers.

So sometimes they're practicing with me.

Sometimes what they're doing is they're saying, I have these personas I wear.

I have these preconceived notions, or I'm just, I'm just scared.

And so I'm a person, I feel like I'm in the corner with them in a boxing ring.

And sometimes I'm just, I'm like, you know, fixing that cut.

I'm giving them some

encouragement.

And sometimes I'm just listening to them so they can kind of purge it out of their system.

So I think everyone in that high pressure

role

is learning how to be a leader, a manager.

And there's one other aspect to this as well, is that it's not always you don't pick up a skill and then that's it, you have it forever.

There can be times when you go back below the line.

And you need someone there who says, you know what?

I'm only invested in you.

I'm not invested in the success of the company.

You know, I don't have the equity here.

So I'm only invested in you.

So I'm going to point out these things.

And they appreciate that.

And I think that's a big reason why CEOs need a CEO coach.

You mentioned a lot of top athletes have coaches.

There's obviously famous cases like Tiger Woods with a swinging coach or Shaquille O'Neal with a free throw coach or a boxing coach.

But which athletes actually have a overall coach and talk to me about that within the field of athletics and what are the best practices there?

Such a good question.

I think what they need as well is someone who goes, look, I'm going to look at your skill.

I'm going to look at your technique, but I'm not just going to help you with your mindset.

And, you know, look, when

top athletes, CEOs, sometimes are going into an off-site, a board meeting, on all hands.

or they have to have a critical conversation with somebody.

You know, they're kind of like this fight or flight feeling.

Sometimes they need somebody else to just say, hey, have you thought of this?

Or

remember, it's not about you.

It's about this.

So that's why I think that corresponds well with

top athletes who are going into maybe, you know,

a big game.

You just need someone to say, hey, these are the things to focus on.

Don't worry about the rest of this.

Or let's put something around you, a framework that allows you to focus on the priorities priorities and not those secondary things.

Sometimes it's just really good as a business leader to have someone in your corner that has no conflict of interest, but yet has high vested interest.

It's kind of a paradox.

Is coaching just a euphemism for therapy?

How does coaching differ from therapy?

And is it just another packaging?

Yeah,

many of my CEOs

have therapists.

And there's a moment when they start revealing things to me where I'll say, you know, I'm not a therapist, right?

And they're like, no, I get it.

So

I focus on the two areas I know, right?

I'm a three-time CEO who, you know, I founded three companies and I successfully drove all those companies off of cliffs.

So I've learned.

I'm also a husband and a dad.

And I've made my fair share of mistakes as a husband and as a dad.

So I can share my own experience.

And I'm wildly curious.

So I love going to find answers about things.

So I think that comes back to the point of this is how I can help CEOs.

It's not that just that coaching is a euphemism for therapy.

It's actually a disparate practice.

Absolutely.

I mean, look, we have frameworks.

Look, at the end of the day, I'm trying to help a CEO build an organization that will deliver a product to customers, right?

I'm not there to really,

I'm not there to delve deeply into their psyche, into their childhood.

I will share some of my experiences and how as to open up and be vulnerable and say, look, I'm going to show you an example of how either I screwed it up when I was a CEO or what I've seen from others, but here's my background, right?

And it's also a way to connect with people, right?

So

I use that, but I'm not on a long-term arc of saying, I'm going to take you from childhood trauma to adult.

I always keep one foot firmly in the fact that we're trying to get your company to be as successful as possible.

Tell me about the problems that CEOs face.

Are they fundamentally different problems when there are 10 employees, 100 employees, 800 employees?

And talk to me about how the nature of problems change as a company scales.

When you start a company, you're a founder.

You're like an explorer, you're an adventurer.

You're like, you know what?

It's not there and I'm going to make it happen, right?

You go into it with a lot of confidence and hubris and like almost arrogance.

You're like, I'm going to make something new.

I think it takes a different breed of person.

So they start a company.

Usually what they do is they go, oh, you know, I worked with this person who's really smart.

I'm going to bring them on.

Or, you know, my roommate in college was fantastic at this one thing I'm not good at.

So I'm going to bring them on.

So

you have 10 people.

Most of them are people like either who took that leap of faith with you or are

part of that startup culture or who go, I don't have anywhere else to go.

So this sounds like a good place to go.

So you're in this kind of battle for survival constantly.

But then you transition out of that.

you find product market fit and you start realizing some of these people who started with me aren't actually you know able to grow with the company so you know what i'm gonna do now we have a bunch of funding people are telling me we're gonna be huge i'm gonna go hire that person from microsoft yes we have 15 employees let me go see if i can hire that senior vp with 22 years experience at microsoft and then what you find is they get in there because actually that person has their own agenda their agenda was you know what i was at microsoft i wasn't promoted fast enough i'm really awesome I want to be at a company now.

I'm going to show everyone that I can do it on my own.

And then they get into there and they realize that it's a completely different mentality, the startup mentality, right?

Is that there is no framework.

It is flying by the seat of your pants.

There is no, like, what are the policies?

And oftentimes it's, you know, we're going to work all night.

Well, no, I have to go home.

You know, my wife, we have twins.

And so there's that,

there's that fit that kind of just deteriorates over time so what then i say is you then bring in some people who have who love that stage that 10 to 100 stage and they have self-awareness that that is the stage then when you get to 800 employees that's the time when you bring in people who have run big orgs that don't need so much hand

hand holding.

It's more kind of bigger picture.

And they've seen a lot of issues.

They know how to, they have their own frameworks.

Nothing surprises them anymore.

And they're ready to take it, but they also, they're at a certain stage of their career.

And what I've seen a lot of times is they're at a stage of the career, they at 800 people and above,

this is their time to make their big mark.

This is when either they're making retirement money or they're like, you know, this is,

I want to accomplish that big thing in my career and this is it.

CEOs come to you with their hairiest problems.

How do you go about getting CEOs unstuck on specific problems?

First thing I ask them to do is, where are you emotionally?

Where are you in your head right now?

What I want to see is, what I want to sense is, are they in flight, fight or flight, or freeze?

Where are they in their head?

Meaning, are they in their amygdala?

Which means they're back

on the Serengeti.

They're either sprinting away from that, I don't know, wildebeest, or they're going to attack it.

Right.

But when you're in that part of your mind, you are,

you're not open to creative thinking.

You're

reacting.

So, what I try to do is I shift them away from that.

So, once you shift them away, and it's either through acknowledging what emotions you're feeling right now,

describing what the problem is, taking a moment to calm down, because calmness expages,

is then

I have a framework, which is a simple thing called issue proposed solution.

So what we start doing is, let's break down the issue.

What simply, what is the issue?

So let's block out all the noise and start typing out that issue.

And I have them do it on Zoom.

So we're sharing something, they're typing out the issue.

And then I asked them what I think is the critical question, which is, how did you contribute to this issue?

And it's because so often CEOs are like, oh, you know what?

It was my head of engineering.

It was my da-da-da-da.

But I go, hey, I'm going to press you and I'm going to challenge you.

How did you contribute to this?

And so usually upon that reflection is a lot of what the solution to that issue is.

So then we write out a proposed solution, break it down into actions, and then I ask them to do the very first action, just start

because

attitude follows action.

And so once they start doing the actual work,

I've seen the transformation.

Three weeks ago, I had a CEO who's in a Series B, was closing a Series B,

and his lead investor had two questions for him.

And he was literally in a state of panic.

You and me, we saw those questions, we would have been like, that one's a yes, and the second one is two sentences.

But he was caring so much more.

He was like, four months I've been working on this.

I can't believe I've been away from the product.

And I just said, you know, it took about 20 minutes to get him out of that state.

And I said, just answer those two questions.

Let's start with the first one.

He typed it out.

And it really was.

He typed out the word yes.

And then the second one, he did a, you know, I said, just where are you mentally?

He wrote it all out.

And I said, let's send it to him.

And I mean, David, the lift, the emotional

heaviness that was around him just lifted.

And he actually, within a minute, was cracking jokes.

And it was, it was the most remarkable thing.

Sometimes you just need somebody by your side helping you guide you through your process that you trust and that you feel like you could rely on.

Absolutely.

We all go through it.

The irony here is that

Right before this podcast, I was on a coaching call with someone who I, a CEO that I greatly admire I've been to his off sites and I sit next to him at off sites while he speaks to the whole company and afterwards he comes to me goes what did you see and I told him all these things like oh this and you just that

and then today he was like you have a kind of a frenetic energy about you today what's going on I was like I'm on a podcast soon I get a little amped up and he would start repeating back what I've told him

which was, I'll tell you one of the main things.

Put both your feet on the ground, plant them firmly so you're solidly planted.

Put your hands in your pocket, or not your pockets, in your lap, and look straight ahead, straight back.

So, I'm doing that right now.

There's this concept in psychology called verbal processing, where you're basically just having somebody listen to your problem could help you solve the problem for yourself.

What percentage of the time are you just helping CEOs verbally process versus being more prescriptive in

do this or do that?

I don't have an exact

process there.

It's an intuitive feel.

You're just watching someone and you know, sometimes it's 30 seconds to help them get out of it.

Sometimes it's 20 minutes.

But I do generally want them to describe what's happening and then move on to something that's more kind of a framework, a tactical framework.

Let's put stuff down on paper.

But you're absolutely right.

If you speak it out, the solution kind of appears.

Some of your clients are some of the top young CEOs in Silicon Valley.

They're these 25-year-old geniuses, the next Mark Zuckerberg, the next Evan Spiegel.

How do you go about coaching people just starting out their career in their early or mid-20s, and how they go about building real large organizations?

How do you help them through that?

There's that myth of like

they're 22, they're 25 years old,

they're a brilliant engineer,

and

leadership and management are something that

they don't have a skill set, and they'll never have it.

So, this is what I see.

When they're 25 years old, they've been engineering probably for 10 years.

If you put anyone in a management leadership role for 10 years, they're going to get good at it.

So, I tell them that.

Look, you've only been doing this job, this leadership one, for two years.

You've been an engineer for 10 years.

You had tremendous skill, but you didn't start off that way, but you spend thousands of hours doing this.

That's what we're doing here.

Two, what I've seen is, look, a corporate CEO moves up the ranks.

They've had 25 years of training, leadership courses, off-sites.

So they're going up it through the ranks and they've had mentorship.

So what I try to show them is: look, look, here are other CEOs who are at the same stage as you, and these are the mistakes they made.

These are their concerns.

And again,

it's about taking those concrete actionable steps to grow those management muscles.

Also, sometimes I tell them, look, just go be founder.

You love the product.

You love engineering.

Go in there and have fun with that.

And I also tell them, look,

you're not the first CEO to have this issue.

And again, when they hear that, they go, oh, are you really?

I'm not.

It's so obvious that they're not.

But sometimes they just need to hear, hey, you're not alone.

and oh they love hearing about did this unicorn cover that issue i mean some of them are like look part of your coaching please tell me others have had this problem i'm like absolutely i had it three times sometimes they're looking to outsource their courage or their hope to a coach i like to think they have that courage and hope inside them but they're fixated on one issue

They're fixated on a persona they're supposed to have of invincibility.

There's also another, here's another myth.

They walk in, they think they have to have all the answers.

And once you tell them, no, you don't have to have all the answers.

In fact, that's why you're building an organization because you don't have the answers and you have to go to others.

And so once they go, wait a minute, I don't have to come in with every answer.

I'm like, no, in fact, tell them you don't have any answers.

Help me.

People will open up and they'll trust you even more.

There's this non-controversial belief in in Silicon Valley that the main function of a CEO is to lead, to fundraise, and to storytell.

But yet, the way that Silicon Valley companies are set up, the CEO is also the chief operator and the chief manager, and there's not really a decoupling practically.

Talk to me about that.

Should a CEO also be the chief manager?

And

what are the pros and cons of that organizational structure?

This is how

I've explained it to CEOs.

You have to be able to manage yourself first.

So it's concentric circles around you.

If you can manage yourself,

that's the first step.

Then learn how to manage those you talk to every day.

Experiment.

Be vulnerable with them.

build trust.

And then the third circle is lead your company.

So this thought that they have to be operators,

the thought that they have to have all the answers, as I mentioned earlier, is a myth.

And as soon as they become comfortable with that, that they don't have all the answers, that they can go out and they can ask

their colleagues for help,

it transforms them into going, okay, what am I good at?

Why am I hiring others?

So I had this really interesting moment early on in my coaching career with a CEO.

It was during an off-site, and their company was about 25 people.

He had built the original architecture for

the software they were building.

But he had been focusing on fundraising and the other parts of being a CEO.

And

he said to, he looked around the room and he goes, I'm no longer the best engineer at this company.

You know, it was kind of displation.

And then he goes, wait, I don't even think,

I think every engineer in my company is better than me.

And he started tearing up.

And it was like he had lost, or he had realized that this kind of moment that in that moment, he realized that

the thing that he had always carried around that he was this fantastic engineer.

He didn't have that any longer.

But at the same time, he went, wait, this is a good thing.

It's good.

I should be in a room filled with people who are better than me.

And of course, I started pumping my my fist.

I was like, that's that was coaching.

There's this paradox that if you're doing the right job and hiring people that are better than you, at some point you go through this existential crisis of, what is my purpose if everybody is better than me, everybody's better at sales, everybody's better at engineering, everyone's better at product development.

There's this kind of paradoxical

situation that the best founders find themselves in.

I think the best founders retain

that belief that they have the vision for the company.

And

it's when they stop pushing the company

and then when they stop pointing out kind of the navigation or where they need to go.

Yeah, I think that's when they finally decide they need to step down.

They don't have that passion for the vision.

Come on, that's, you know, it's still, it comes down to we build product for customers who want them.

And if you lose that,

then you're not a CEO anymore.

I think a lot of founders also underappreciate, even though they might not be the best engineer or the best salesperson, they do, they are that unique unicorn in that they have a little bit of everything.

So they might be,

you know,

horizontally have many different skills, maybe not all 100 out of 100, but they uniquely have all those skills that it takes to build a company and to lead a company from the front.

There are two types of CEOs.

There's the founder CEO, and the founder CEO, like I said earlier, they're explorers, they're adventurers.

They are going uncharted waters, and they have to have the belief in themselves and the belief in the product.

So they focus really,

they're so laser-focused on the product, product, product, product.

That's great.

Let's get the product perfect.

Let's keep it innovating that product.

And then there's the second type of CEO, still does, you know, is very important, but they've come up through the org and they become, sure, that they know the product's important, but the company becomes their product.

The running of the company becomes the product.

And I think that's the difference.

You know, this is founder mode, which is, I'm obsessed about our product.

And then

older companies, more mature companies, were obsessed about the operating of our company.

And, you know, my whole thing is: look,

I love the founder focus on the product.

When you look at the companies that are most successful, what percentage of the CEOs are using carrots, kind of upside and vision versus the stick and kind of the risk of losing out?

Some of the most productive organizations in history, like GE or Goldman Sachs, routinely fired the bottom 10%.

That worked for those organizations.

Talk to me about the best practices and startups and whether it's the carrot or the stick that really drives the power law outcomes.

Let me talk about that kind of

Jack Walsh

and Mark Zuckerberg theory of, hey, every year we cut the bottom 10%,

bottom 20%.

Look, most of the companies I work with have under 500 employees.

Many of these CEOs know who's been hired.

They know who they're going to be letting go.

They take it deeply personally when they know, but they also, they already come to the table knowing this.

If they have that kind of,

if they make those sweeping layoffs of the bottom 10%, they know that these people who are people who play mortgages, who are real people, then have to go back out in the workforce and say, yeah, I left this company that has this policy of the top, bottom 20% leaving.

So that it's like they have a scarlet letter.

So what I advise COs is, hey, look, when you're firing someone, it's not their fault.

It's your fault.

You either hired them and they didn't really have a clear understanding of what they needed to do.

You let them into the company.

So if you have to fire them, that's really on your shoulders.

What are you going to do to help them get to

a position where they're going to thrive?

Give them a good severance

to help them until they get their next job.

Be their biggest advocate.

So that's what I see is like, look, it's not carrot in the stick.

It's rather,

where were you responsible?

How were you responsible for hiring someone that didn't work out at your company?

Was it a culture?

Was it during the interview process?

Was it, did you, did you not do a good job anti-selling them?

I mean, did you tell them, do they come in thinking they're going to work 30 hours a week, but every engineer works 80 hours a week?

Were there misaligned expectations?

Did you hire someone who only worked in an org that had 5,000 people and you're a 20-person startup?

So I put the onus back on to the CEO.

I do that a lot, which I say, how are you contributing to this issue?

Double-click on this concept of anti-selling.

And what are some examples?

Anti-selling is internally at our company.

We'll say things like, look, if you're not open to feedback, this is not the right place for you.

If you're

not willing to share your vulnerabilities, if you're not willing to to open up and be there for your clients, this is not the right place for you.

And so there are those moments where I think the CEO has to be, or anyone hiring, has to go through an anti-selling phase of going, look, this is the reality of our company.

Man, we're fanatical about product.

We got people who come in on Saturdays because they love to be here.

But if that's not the culture you want, then this is where you shouldn't be.

Look,

I have a CEO who makes the same joke all the time, right?

He makes the same thing.

And he goes, you know what?

I'm really comfortable with making that joke.

It's not an off-color joke, but it's the same joke.

And he says, it just pops in his head.

And he goes, if you don't like that joke, I'm sorry.

I'm going to keep on saying it.

So when they enter the company or when they're there for a couple of months, they're like, he's saying the same joke.

They were warned.

And again, it's not offensive, but it's like saying, I'm going to to tell you a chicken cross-the-road joke all the time.

Okay, there you are.

We went kind of the bottom 10, 20%.

Let's go to the top 10%.

What are some characteristics that you know immediately?

This is a top 10% player.

What are some telltale early signs?

Number one, number two, number three, this is it.

They can solve multi-step problems.

That's it.

Right there.

It's going to be about 10 to 20% of your org, or maybe 10 to 20 people out of your 500-person org who you can trust can do multi-step problems.

There's going to be another portion that can do one-step problems.

You say, hey, here's a problem.

They can figure that one step out.

Great.

And then the others who need to be,

who are more successful when you tell them, here are the steps you have to take, and they execute on them.

Let's double click on the motivation of the top 10%.

Do they have to be managed or do you have to just align incentives and then they kind of manage themselves?

Is managing someone or having to manage them a sign of a non-top 10% performer?

It's

so.

When I hear you say that, I think of it like this.

I think they have developed as a manager, they don't have the experience yet.

So when you're looking at a senior

manager, a senior leader at a company, you'd be surprised of how vulnerable they are,

how aware they are of their skills, where their deficiencies are,

how much joy they have in what they're doing, right?

They also know how to set up boundaries.

And I think, you know, they're able to have conversations with the CEO or whoever their manager is, and they set boundaries from the beginning.

They have that kind of experience and confidence to speak that way.

I think what happens, though, when you have people who are more inexperienced in an organization, they tend to

tend to do as they're told

and not ask

questions about how to do it or express their own feelings about what they're doing.

Thank you for listening.

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One of the things that, because you always have to be conscious of your weight as the leader of a company and how people will oftentimes take you literally.

And one of the things I try to always instill is, I'm going to ask you to do something and I'm going to tell you how I think I should do it, but there's probably smarter ways to do it.

And don't take me literally,

take me figuratively in that this is what I want to accomplish, not this is how I want you to do it.

The CEO is the loudest voice in the room.

CEO says something

and their exec team, anyone there is going to go, oh, you know what?

I hadn't thought of that.

And I think that's the right answer.

So, what I advise CEOs to do is be the last to share your opinion.

So, you may write it up and you may be doing

a written brainstorm,

but paste it in last so people read that last.

Because what you'll find is even the most confident, capable executive will go, well, you know what, I see some point in yours, and they'll show that.

So, that's what I say.

I also say to new CEOs, especially, is every time you walk in the room, everywhere, someone's going to look over at you and be like, there's a CEO.

And they can't help but look over and think, are they noticing me?

Is this it?

Your presence is always felt.

Three,

I recommend CEOs phrase their requests this way.

Would you be willing to do X?

Because when we tell people to do something, they immediately go, wait, should I or should I not?

I don't know okay but you're the CEO I have to do it

so it's comes from the old concept of command and control you know 50 years ago it was hierarchical and the boss said do it and you did it so now though it's not that we don't want our employees and we want to give them a bunch of choice and we want to say hey if you feel like it or not no but what we are saying is hey would you be willing to do this gives people a moment to go yeah i I would like to do that for you.

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Some common mistakes that the most experienced or the smartest CEOs make when it comes to managing their employees.

The big issue there is the quote concept of, you know, what are you doing with anger and fear?

Is fear giving you bad advice?

And so a lot of times they will get stuck in a concept that they're listening to fear and it's holding them back from doing something.

And what I've found again and again, and I'll make a wager with you, is that fear gives you really bad advice because you're still in the Serengeti and you're like, I must run.

But in the boardroom or in that executive meeting, it's actually that fear is giving you bad advice.

And actually, usually 180-degree change will help you with that.

So it's usually the opposite will happen.

The other thing I find is with anger is that there's this misconception out there that CEOs should show some anger sometimes.

You know, they got to rattle some chains.

And I see it a lot of times with younger CEOs who believe that that's the persona they should have.

And I'm saying is, you know, a lot of times, especially with those tech

CEOs, and not the technology business, but like the engineer CEOs, I point out to them that when you get angry with someone, you usually have to go back and apologize.

And how much time does that take?

And you should see them.

They go, Wait, that, yeah, wait, I had to schedule a meeting that was 15 minutes, 45 minutes to go apologize.

I'm like, and that's 45 minutes of time, and you're so productive.

They're like, Oh, yeah, you're right, I shouldn't get angry at people because it will take me 45 minutes later to apologize.

I'm like, It's one way to think of it.

So, to answer your question,

yeah, I think a lot of CEOs stumble on those,

how to handle their emotions.

Play devil's advocates, some of the top managers

most famously steve jobs and they have these really high bars and anger or a break-in report has been a way to continuously increase that bar talk me through

when the best practice is kind of this job steve jobs type of approach versus more collaborative approach and when should a ceo use one or the other i think we're falling into that habit or we're falling into that thing which is here are these mythical figures in tech and we've read these stories, you know, the Walter Isaacson book or we've watched the movie about Steve Jobs and we're like, oh, he just yelled at people.

He got them to do the greatest work of their lives.

But these are at times fictional accounts.

I'm not sure how he did it, but I've worked with over 80 CEOs.

And I watch how the most successful do it there.

And I've never seen any of them go ballistic on people and scream at people to get them to move.

I think in this day and age, especially with remote, people will go, I'm out of here.

You're going to scream at me?

Yeah, they want someone.

They want a leader that puts them in a position to work on really cool,

really cutting-edge things.

But

when you lose your mind on someone, It sends them into a panic.

And I don't believe they're going to do their best work.

So again, I say to CEOs, if you do that, you one,

will break a lot of,

you'll break trust with them.

And they'll look at you every time and think, and is that person going to snap at me?

And then two, they're going to go, look, with remote work,

I'm one click away from a job for working for somebody who will support me, will push me, but will not

destroy me.

And people are much more likely today to go, I can find something else.

I'm not going to put up with that.

There's a subtlety there where you don't necessarily want to go yell and go ballistic, but there is room to say, look, you could do better.

Here's ways to think about it.

This isn't good enough.

Let's focus on how to make this better in a cool and calm demeanor versus going ballistic, which puts somebody in that fight-or-flight

amygdala-like response that keeps them from achieving their best work.

Absolutely.

I see it all the time.

Do you see for challenging and bringing out the best in people by asking them to do better, by really asking them to expand on their current capacity?

Yeah,

people want to produce great work.

I believe at this level, these kind of very competitive

startups who have

vast potential, people want to work with really strong colleagues who push them to the best work possible.

It's never just a CEO saying, you know what?

This is where we need to be.

You need a peer structure at your company of high achievers because you want to look around and go, I'm working with fantastic people.

This motivates me to do the work.

These talented people, I'm curious.

I want to learn and grow from them.

And so they'll filter themselves out of a company.

because they go, this is where I want to be.

I want to be around people who are as ambitious as me, who are smart, smart, who are curious, who want to succeed.

And so that's what I see.

It's not just the CEO setting the bar, it's your colleagues as well.

It's walking down the hall and going, oh, this is interesting.

This person was also stayed up on Friday nights trying to find an answer to this.

So I want to be around those kind of people.

I had an argument with my fiancé, Jessica, and I told her some things that rubbed me the wrong way or that I didn't like.

And in return, she retaliated by telling me that the things things that she didn't like.

And my response to her, first of all, you know, it was not easy.

It hurt my ego and I had to recover.

But I told her, I want you to tell me how I could be better.

Like, yes, it does sting, but I want to be better.

You're not punishing me by telling me to be better.

Maybe it hurts for 24 hours, but that is the price of growth.

I think the price of growth is where we egotistically are today.

And then it gets, there's pain about

the gap between where we think we are and where we really are.

And that is the growth.

So I think that is the cost of growth, this kind of brutal feedback

that ideally is delivered in the right packaging, in the right container.

But sometimes, you know, that's more of a nice to have than a need to have.

Can I coach you right now?

Yeah.

Let's do some coaching.

Let's do it.

Did you?

hear what she was saying?

I did hear it.

Yeah.

But how did you hear it?

How did I hear it?

I heard, you know, she gave me six pieces of feedback.

It took me 30 seconds to process.

I thought about it.

I agreed with.

Did she feel?

Did she feel heard?

Yeah.

Yeah.

She did.

She had a really good experience from it.

How do I know that?

Or how did she feel heard?

How did she feel heard?

She told me this was like one of the best conversations we've had.

Because I think she had been holding this in.

So she delivered the six pieces of feedback.

I immediately, or after 30 seconds, let me stop you there.

I'm going to say, is

when,

like, 30 years of being with my wife, we started dating in college.

I got the keg for her 21st birthday party.

That's how long we go back.

So let me say this.

The number one thing is when someone's giving you feedback, the first thing I do is I repeat it back to them.

I advise all my CEOs to do this, is just repeat it back because 80% of the time, their colleagues just want to be heard.

And it's so affirming when the CEO stops and goes, hey, so what I think I heard you say is boom, boom, boom.

It doesn't have to be exactly it, but it has to be the gist of it.

And then you ask the person, did I get that right?

And it's just this moment.

of going, I wasn't judging you during that time.

I was just listening.

I'm going to prove to you that I was listening.

So you repeat it it back to them.

Now, I tell my CEOs to do this, if I try to do this, my wife too much, she's like, you take that voodoo coaching BS,

you can take it right out of here.

But there's some times when it does actually,

it really does help.

And then after I say, when she says, yes, you've heard me, I thank her for it.

And then I also say, okay, this is what I'm going to do.

Or I accept your feedback or I don't, but this is what I'm going to do.

Because look, what I've learned about my wife is this, sometimes she wants a hug, sometimes she wants help, sometimes she just wants me to hear her.

I've learned more and more over the years that it's usually she doesn't want my help.

But as a guy, I usually go, oh, I can fix this.

She's like, I don't need you to fix it.

And it's often she just wants me to hear.

And I find that with CEOs and their colleagues.

If the CEO hears you, and is not preparing a defense or preparing to judge what you've just said, but it's going to repeat repeat it back.

Man, that's

so enriching, so affirming.

So the way that I handled it, she gave me these six pieces of advice.

I more or less immediately agreed with three of those pieces.

And I said, I'm aware of this.

Thank you for making me even more aware of it.

It is something I'm working on.

It's not something that I'm proud of.

I'm like, I'm on it.

I disagreed with one of her pieces of feedback was only half the story.

I agreed with that half, but I didn't, I said, there's also this part of that.

And she agreed with that.

She said, yeah, I was, you know, probably wasn't fair there.

And the other two, I'm just like, let me think about that.

And the reason I processed it in this way was because that was my honest position.

I don't believe in just giving lip service.

Somebody says something, you disagree with them.

I don't think that's good for the relationship either.

If you don't believe it to be the case.

So as I hear this, this is a couple of things I would have done.

Is the three things you agree with, and you're like, look, I know this about myself.

What actions are you taking?

Does she know those actions?

And do you go back and say, you know, in a couple of weeks, hey, I've been working on this.

Just want to let you know that feedback you gave me,

first of all, I so appreciate it.

And there.

The one you didn't accept or need more, that's kind of like saying, hey, I'd love to get or share the other side of the story or something more.

Okay, that's fine.

The two you need to come back to, would you be willing to say to her today or tomorrow, hey, I've thought about this and I want to respond.

I want to tell you.

Or would you be willing to say, hey, I'm still thinking about this?

Give me to the end of the week.

Yeah, absolutely.

And we even talked about it this morning.

We talked about how we both appreciated the feedback, how it both hurt, but

was important to talk about.

A lot of us, including myself, have seen a lot of nearly psychopaths, effective psychopaths, not murderers, but psychopaths when it comes to seeing humans like objects and seeing them as numbers in a spreadsheet become wildly successful.

And it feels like if I was to hyperscale a company from 10 employees to 10,000 employees, some of that would be helpful in terms of being able to manage just not having to manage the emotions that are coming in with that kind of growth and having to get rid of bottom performers, all these things.

You keep on repeating that they're good people.

Isn't having a little psychopathy, maybe not, you know, true psychopath, isn't that actually something that will enable somebody to grow faster?

And if not, why not?

You've mentioned psychopath a few times, and

I've been thinking about this question because we talked about it before, but I've been thinking about this, and

I think the psychopaths are more the types who are like, I came up through an organization.

I had to step on people's

shoulders and crush them as I went up.

Because as I go up the ladder, I need to,

it's a zero-sum game.

I think CEOs, founders, we're talking about founders.

I think it's a little bit different.

It because they're so focused on the product, that's where they become psychotic.

It's about the product.

A lot of them come in.

They don't care if they have the title of CEO.

A lot of them come in and go, yeah, we decided on the car ride, the Uber ride over to the VC's office when they, and we knew they were going to ask who's going to be the CEO.

We were like, You're the CTO because you're really good at tech, and you are operations, and I'm the one with the vision, and I'm good at selling what we do.

I'll be the CEO, right?

So, they don't go in going,

um, I want to be the CEO.

I think a lot of them go into it and going, If you screw around with my product, I'll be psychotic.

Um,

I wish I had a better answer for you.

Ego has become this thing that people openly talk about.

One of my favorite books, my second favorite book ever, Ego is the Enemy by Ryan Holiday, really changed my thinking in terms of how ego can be hurtful.

In the same vein, I also see with my own eyes, ego oftentimes acts as a shield in very difficult environments.

A couple examples of that, Steve Jobs, obviously with Apple, and forcing a new way of doing things and new vision into the marketplace.

Travis Kalanik at Uber, some might argue that that ultimately led to his demise, but it was certainly extremely effective for that industry.

Is there a place for ego?

And should an organization respect the CEO's ego, and should a CEO respect their own ego in order to align themselves with success?

Ego.

Such a funny thing, isn't it um i mentioned earlier that look um among startup ceos

you you know typically you need to have a healthy ego because you're going look i'm going to literally try to create something from nothing there was not a company there right there's no origin story it wasn't like and 35 years ago my brother and i started this company no out of nothing

So you have to have a certain amount of confidence.

You know, it's even one could say it's like audacity.

And yes, I can build something something new.

And I think that's healthy ego.

But there needs to be this delicate balance because

look

there's healthy sense of ego.

And I think that's what you're talking about with Steve Jobs, who was like, I have a vision for a product.

Let's go make this.

And I think his ego, you know, where you saw this kind of.

this myth of his anger would come out when it's like, I want this product to be amazing, right?

So that's good.

I think when ego becomes destructive, it's when it's driven by something like insecurity, when CEOs become afraid to listen, when CEOs think that showing vulnerability is a weakness,

or when they become defensive when they, you know, they get feedback from people.

And that's when they close down.

So that's an unhealthy form of ego.

The best CEOs I work with,

they've learned to keep their egos in check.

Either they have a kitchen cabinet of people who will

tell them the truth or tell them things that they don't want to hear.

They'll, you know, when they use their ego to inspire, to take risks,

and also stay resilient.

That's one of the key jobs of a CEO.

Just be a founder, to be resilient.

But those with the healthiest egos surround themselves with

great people who will give them feedback.

And

those with strong egos, they're willing to hear the uncomfortable truths and react to those.

So I think that's the balance between healthy and destructive egos.

The way that I look at ego is it's a variable, it's kind of like part of the recipe of a successful startup and a successful founder, and it's all contextual.

For example,

if Travis is in the early days of Uber and taxi lobbies are trying to crush him, corrupt politicians are trying to keep them out of markets, if it makes him feel better to fly first class versus in the main cabin, if that really makes that big difference so that he has more energy and more resources in order to take on the taxi lobby, I think that could be a positive thing.

So I think there is a room for positive ego, especially when it's not destructive to an organization, when it doesn't come at the expense of somebody else's ego or somebody else's productivity.

But I do think we've over-corrected in terms of thinking that all ego is bad, because if you look historically, the people that have really changed the world have had that

extreme ego that they will be the ones that will make things different, whether it's the Wright brothers had the boom CEO, super the CEO of Boom Supersonic, who said, I'm going to bring back Supersonic jets.

For a while, probably people looked at him as the most egotistical guy, but he made it work.

He had the staying power to see that through.

So I do think there's been a little bit of over-correction.

I also think there's this.

personality theater where people go around and tell investors how they're they're flying in main cabin how they're the last to talk and all these things when in reality if you were to follow them that's not true so there's this kind of virtue signaling when it comes to ego as well.

That's diluting kind of the reality of it.

I think you're absolutely right.

There are all these origin stories, right?

You know, so-and-so is worth $7 billion.

But I always fly economy, right?

And it's like, okay, that's your story.

And then I've got others who will say, I only fly private.

I did 700 hours last year, but I had to fly to Sweden to talk this engineer and joining our team.

And nothing says, you know, um, join our team, like showing up their doorstep the next day.

Um, sure, what works for your company?

What works for you?

Um,

but going back to that original, which is ego gets in the way when you're not willing to listen to constructive feedback,

ego gets in the way when you think only your answer is the right answer,

and ego gets in the way when you penalize those around you who you you may not like their response, right?

You know, when it ego is covering up an insecurity,

yeah, that to me is false ego.

Again, founders are a special breed.

You know, when she goes, I'm going to go build this company or build this around this product, and that's pretty cool.

And I think it takes a healthy amount of ego and audacity to be like, yeah, trust me, I'm going to go build this company.

But I don't know about Travis.

I don't know about Steve Jobs.

I know from what I see with the CEOs I work with, and there's a healthy balance of ego, but there's also a little bit of glee in their eyes.

Like, oh my God, let me go build this thing.

And so let's focus on that, that

they're also fulfilling a need they have, and they're having fun with it.

for the most part.

So I like to focus on that.

Certainly, intrinsic motivation is so critical because there's so many years of not having positive feedback from the market, of people thinking you're crazy.

You have to enjoy your craft, whether that's because of ego, that's love for the product, that's love for your organization.

You need to find some way to be intrinsically motivated every single day through going through a very difficult pursuit.

Absolutely.

Look, I have CEOs who,

you know, they say if I could just focus on the product and not the people, it would be so much easier.

Yeah, that's true.

But you need people around you.

So Alexis, you yourself have a remarkable story.

Tell me about your own personal story and how that makes you a better coach.

Yeah, so my story is

kind of unique in the fact that

I was born in Spain to two kind of hippie-ish parents.

who were very good at making the kid, but the follow-through wasn't their forte.

and so off i was shipped to my grandmother's doorstep in washington dc

uh

and

my mother was uh kind of taught me on this doorstep and she wasn't around uh and i saw her maybe 10-15 times throughout my life uh and my father though was uh was around and I spent a lot of time with him.

I was primarily raised by my grandmother until high school.

And then I moved in with my father and my stepmother, who were very loving, wonderful.

But I grew up in this kind of, look, I was abandoned.

And when you're young, you go, I just want to be normal.

I want, you know, the dream of the Noah's Ark of American prosperity.

Two parents, two cars in the driveway, two pets, two siblings.

I just want that.

And it wasn't until

it's kind of my late 20s, I began to understand how deeply those experiences of being abandoned, of growing up in this, you know,

being raised by my grandmother, who was an expat from Austria, who was a wonderful, amazing entrepreneur.

But I was left alone a lot.

And

those early experiences shaped me and how they carved these kind of deep furrows into my emotional landscape.

And I found myself sharing these stories about how I was raised with people.

I used to do it at business school.

And I remember there would be a few people who would look at it and go, oh, that's not me.

And then I'd have so many more coming up to me and going, I share that background, I share that experience with you.

And you start realizing everyone carries these

childhood experiences that have shaped who they are.

And I realized just how these universal feelings

of being different or unseen can be.

And it became clear my story resonated with people

Because we all struggle with these things privately.

And by opening up,

I fostered a level of trust with people.

And I also

unburdened myself of something that I was ashamed of.

You shared the story

on when we first chatted.

Tell me about the power of vulnerability and how that helps you build connections with others.

I've always felt like, look, everyone carries around some insecurity and some pain.

Those moments kind of define us as humans.

I think they define us actually more than any success can.

And I share mine early with founders because that vulnerability is, I think, establishes a real connection.

And if I drop my mask and I share who I am and you know, look, one of the quickest ways I do that is by saying this kind of quip I have about my CEO career.

Look, I'm a three-time founder, and I successfully drove all those companies off of cliffs.

And I would say about 75% of founders go, oh, yeah.

And they laugh and they go, oh, I know what that feels like.

And 25% don't react.

And so it's my way of opening up and being, look, and looking for genuine understanding and empathy.

And does that ever backfire being so vulnerable and transparent about your background?

It has a couple of times.

And it used to hurt because I would say, I wouldn't understand.

Like, are you, are you reacting to me as a person?

And I've just opened up.

I was being vulnerable.

Recently, I had a powerful clarifying moment around this, which was, you know, a CEO once told me openly he had less respect for me after hearing my story.

And that stung initially.

But instead of retreating or becoming defensive, I faced it head on and I asked him directly why he felt that way.

And in that conversation, conversation, I realized he was reaching for the content and not the context of what I was sharing.

The abandonment, the struggle, that's not what he was talking about.

And I was reacting to his judgment of my vulnerability.

That shifted everything for me is when I realized I could confidently and with curiosity and openness ask him about that.

I was able to turn that into an authentic connection with him,

which far outweighed the discomfort I initially felt.

When it comes to what's driving founders, the story is always this grand mission.

My suspicion is that there is a lot of childhood drama.

There is a lot of childhood trauma that's driving top founders, a lot of being unseen, being unappreciated, unloved, that leads them to take such incredible risks and go contrarian on a specific space.

What percentage of founders are trying to overcome this insecurity, this abandonment, or lack of love in their childhood?

Honestly, probably about 150% of them.

It's a high number.

Look, none of us arrives in adulthood perfectly polished, right?

We have baggage.

What we went through in childhood, even if it has, you know, this kind of stereotypical or this,

this, what society tells us is a perfect upbringing.

I think it's human nature.

We pick up on things as we're as we're growing, as we're aging, things that are limiting to us.

Even subtle moments shape us.

And so this is true of founders.

They have, look, you're right, they have outside drive.

It's sometimes fueled by early feelings needing to prove themselves.

The immigrant story, or they didn't get picked for 10th grade basketball, and that's driven them.

But what's fascinating to me is seeing founders who use these experiences to fuel their growth.

And then, when they're aware of it, they can channel it in ways that's productive

and they turn them into powerful motivators.

So, it's not just

mired in this kind of self-reflection, but rather the power of that awareness helps drive them to grow.

I find this 150%

number is more or less correct within 10 percentage points.

But in seriousness, I do find that this drive is extremely prevalent in the top founders.

And also the ones that really make it the distance.

If you think about Mark Zuckerberg saying no to a billion dollars, Evan Spiegel saying no to $3 billion, billion, they tend to be able to transfer their drive from feeling a lack of to a grand vision.

So they are able to take out that fuel and put in rocket fuel, the extreme kind of fuel and extreme ambition and also

desire to truly change and carve their own

kind of their own vision into society.

So I do find that the ones that are purely driven by that lack of do tend to sell early and maybe not lead to the type of power laws that venture capitalists are looking for.

The ones that truly change the world, put that Zuckerberg, Evan Spiegel, I put Elon.

A lot of these people are mostly driven by positive views of the future and how they can make a positive impact, even if even if 100% of their motivation early on was due to this lack, still they're able to transition from this driven from lack to driven to a vision.

I had this great conversation earlier today with the series with Amer, the CEO of Ensave, and he was so excited about a framework they're going to use internally.

And he said, I didn't get it from anywhere else.

I'm not picking it up because I read an article.

He literally said this.

He goes, it's right for my company.

It's right for NSAVE.

And I know it's right for how we're going to run our company.

And I was like, that's what I want to see.

It's like that first principle thinking.

The same thing I hear all the time from people who say, CEOs, oh, you know what Jensen's doing?

You know, did you read that article?

It's he does one on 60,

right?

It's him and his 60 reports.

I'm going to do that too.

I'm like, but you only have 25 people in your company.

But then we go through it, and I'm like,

why do you want to do it?

You go, well, Jensen does it.

So, and I don't want to do one-on-ones anymore.

And I said, I understand.

But what does your company need?

But also, remember, Jensen's been doing this at NVIDIA for 30 years, and this is what works for them now.

And so when Amr from NSAFE said that, I was like, oh, this is beautiful.

This is beautiful.

You're looking at where your company is right now.

They raised 18 million from Sequoia.

They're a Series A company with 25 employees.

They are on a rocket ship, but what do they need right now?

And I love that thinking.

It's this capital P first principles.

My first principles are Jensen Wang is doing it, which of course is the second principles, if anything.

And there's the lowercase first principles, which is no one else is doing it.

But using first principles thinking,

I've deducted this framework that works for me.

That is truly first principles thinking.

Yeah, and the first principle thinking I love about what Amr is doing is like, we're going to do a two-week experiment, and then we're going to come back and see how it works.

Let's assume that a CEO...

can't afford an Alexis or a Motori method and wants to implement one step today to be better.

What is one one step that they could take today to become a better CEO?

Here's three things.

One is making people feel heard.

That's so important.

It's because it just slows you down as a CEO, a manager, and it helps you connect with the person across from you.

Because again, you're not judging the person.

You're not focusing on judging, defending.

or excusing yourself.

You're literally taking an active listening role and you're repeating it back.

And so often when you repeat it back to somebody and they feel like you've heard them, that's 80% of the way there.

Great.

That's one.

Two, learn how to ask and receive feedback.

And when I say feedback, I don't mean just that someone is giving you feedback, but have the integrity to say if you accept it or not.

I find CEOs really have a hard time having difficult conversations with people they avoid it and things fester so have that conversation people want honesty and they will always respect it if you're being authentic so when you're giving feedback or you're receiving feedback tell them if you accept it or not and then put that feedback into actions if you've accepted it and make it visible to people Like if they've asked you to do something and you accept it, follow up with them.

Let them know, hey, in our next one-on-one or an all-hands meeting, you guys have said that I wasn't doing a good job of doing of doing active listening.

I've really worked on that.

I hope you've seen that.

If you haven't seen it, please point it out to me.

That's great.

That's good feedback.

And then it's this concept of anger and fear.

How do you get out of anger and fear as a CEO?

Anger makes you do something you later regret and you have to go back and change it or apologize,

right

it's okay to have that emotion of anger because i think it it helps you it's it's telling you something but take a moment to realize what it's saying to you because it's about you not the person across from you and then two fear is so limiting i'm not saying the fear that says i can walk into a busy intersection and that truck will not hit me i have no fear now that's stupidity right you know what's going to happen but there are other fears that are limiting.

Like, I can't go have this conversation, this tough conversation, because my CTO will quit.

Here's the fear.

I'm telling you, it'll be the 180-degree difference.

One is having that difficult conversation with your CTO is actually going to be liberating for you.

Now, if your CEO CTO leaves or not, you're going to be okay.

But the story you're telling yourself around that is limiting.

So

in conclusion, it's make people feel heard.

Learn how to ask

and accept or not accept feedback and put actions to it.

And then, three,

understand

the power that anger or fear has over you as a CEO.

In terms of your clients, do you work with just CEOs?

Do you work with fund managers, VCs?

I work with

primarily founders.

I work with

a couple of VCs

and a couple of PE firms as well.

And I find the same issues across the board.

And what would be the best way for people to get in contact with you if they're interested in potentially being coached?

You can go to masharimethod.com, our website.

And we have a big

click here

if you want to work with us.

You can also reach out to me on LinkedIn

and email me or my colleagues, and you'll find that on our website.

Alexis, I want to really thank you for taking the time to delve in deep and even helping me, even delving deep into my relationship drama and my conversations as well.

Thank you, David.

Really appreciate being on here and sharing everything and hearing what's going on in your life as well.

Thank you, Alexis.

Thanks for listening to my conversation.

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