Listen to “#837 Why Founders Fail: Insights from Silicon Valley’s CEO Whisperer” on Spreaker.

On‌ ‌this‌ ‌episode‌ ‌of‌ ‌The‌ ‌Small‌ ‌Business‌ ‌Radio‌ ‌Show…‌ ‌

Most start ups fail within 5 years. Many more are the walking dead- why do most founders build their company’s to fail and what can they change about it.

Rich Hagberg, Ph.D., often referred to as “Silicon Valley’s CEO Whisperer,” is a trained psychologist who has spent the last 40 years of his career as an executive management coach for over 6,000 executives. Since 2009 he has worked with companies like Tinder, Twitter, Dropbox, MixPanel, Zendesk, Quora, Asana, Pinterest, Salesforce, Munchery, Reddit, Gusto, Cruise, Tinder, Optimizely, Instacart, Patreon, Nerdwallet, and Super Evil Megacorp (it’s a gaming company).

His new book is called “Founders, Keepers: Why Founders Are Built to Fail, and What it Takes to Succeed”.

Here is what we discussed:

  • You introduce the concept of the “time bomb” inside every founder. What is this time bomb, and what causes it to explode?
  •  What are some surprising or counterintuitive behaviors that signal a founder is growing—rather than just acting confident?
  •  Why do we still fall for the myth of glorifying the “genius jerk?”
  •  What role should investors, boards, and executive teams play in supporting—or challenging—founders through their personal growth journeys?
  •  What’s one skill most overlooked by early-stage founders that becomes crucial later on?
  •  If a reader could only take one insight from this book and put it into practice immediately, what would you want that to be?

In the second segment of this show I note that there is the old adage that we fear speaking in front of people more than death- the joke goes that we would rather be dead that speak in front of an audience.

Lee Glickstein is a trailblazer in the field of public speaking and the creator of the globally recognized Speaking Circles method and founder of Speaking Circles International. He is an authority on leadership presence and magnetism in public speaking.  Having overcome his own crippling fear of public speaking, Glickstein has spent decades helping others transform their relationship with audiences. His first book is called “Be Heard Now! End Your Fear of Public Speaking Forever”.

We talked about:

  1. How severe was your own public speaking anxiety?
  2. Can your method help people in business even if they don’t plan to speak in front of audiences?
  3. How can breathing techniques transform a speaker’s connection with their audience?
  4. How did you come up with Relational presence and what is it?
  5. Can your methods improve virtual communications like zoom?

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