Hi founders and fellow VC Friends!
Each week we deliver one awesome person to your inbox. These are the people you need to know—the marketers, sales gurus, engineers, ops wizzes— who give your startup superpowers 🚀. The best part is, everyone is hireable on an interim basis.
Please meet Lucy, the founder of Inward, 1:1 coaching for your whole team 🚀
Multiple people told me about Lucy and Inward before we met. Serendipitously, I was meeting with her husband, a fellow investor, when he started raving about his wife’s coaching co. I had to ask,“you don’t happen to be married to Lucy Born, do you?” — the rest was history.
Lucy's trusted by startups and leaders from companies such as Airbnb, Fullscript, Peloton, EA and more.
Lucy started Inward, a group that works with venture-backed teams to tackle employee leadership, role transitions, performance and well-being.
Most recently, Lucy worked with the Product Team at Peloton. She studied at top business schools, received her Masters in Counselling Psychology, and is a Registered Psychotherapist. One little-known fact about Lucy is that she is an avid fantasy reader and is currently writing her own series that merges fantasy and self-development.
You can hire Lucy and Inward to provide virtual one-on-one coaching to help your team reach their potential inside and outside of work.
Want an intro to Lucy? LMK and I’ll connect you!
Lucy kindly shared some pro tips with us here ✨
To start, there are three main reasons that founders and execs reach out to Inward for help:
They’re burnt out - We often meet type-A personalities who work super long days. They’re stressed and exhausted. We aren’t here to say work less. Instead, we focus on putting the support in place to work without crashing and burning - on repeat.
They struggle with imposter syndrome, self-criticism or fear of failure- Whether you’re building a company, pursuing a new career path, or launching a new idea, everyone faces struggles with their inner critic. Developing a resilient mindset helps you embrace discomfort and challenge your inner critic.
They are learning how to lead - Founders and leaders are often successful on their own, or in small teams, but struggle to drive their vision with clarity at scale. They’re used to doing all the work themselves. Leadership requires that you delegate and coach people, instead of solving the problems yourself. To build autonomous and high-performing teams, we focus on developing leadership traits like empathy, active listening, and brainstorming.
One of the best ways to tackle these struggles is to take care of yourself and create daily habits to reach peak performance. Here’s how to get started creating great habits.
Pick your 1-3 non-negotiable daily habits
A co-founder we worked with found that she would consistently make long to-do lists of activities, including things like go for a 1-hour bike ride, read a book, and get to bed early. But after an exhausting day, all she wanted to do was sit on the couch and unwind with a show. She’d stay up too late and wake up tired. Every time she’d try to get back on track, she’d disappoint herself again.
Together, we looked at her goals and broke them down into small repeatable steps. For example, instead of bike for an hour, bike for 10 minutes. 10 minutes is better than not biking at all. Small habits over time make all the difference.
To get started, figure out what you need more of in your life. Relaxation? Better sleep?
What goals can create daily habits around?
This founder picked a few:
To work on her stress management: Meditate for 10 minutes a day.
Eat the frog: First thing in the morning, pick one proactive priority off the list and tackle it.
Move and get outside: Walk 10,000 steps
Sleep through the night: Unplug from technology by 8:30pm*
*This founder noticed that being on technology before bed made it hard to sleep and stuck thinking about work. The nights she worked later than 8:30pm, dramatically reduced her sleep quality and wellbeing (even the difference between 8:30pm and 9pm was massive).
Make your habits SMART
In the beginning, most people find it hard to stick to habits. Your inner voice saying “it’s ok to skip today — it’s just one day,” can be loud.
Make your goals very specific and measurable so you know whether or not you’ve reached your goal. For example, walk a minimum of 10,000 steps. With a tangible goal you can easily ask yourself, did I reach my goal? Yes or no.
Look at the parameters of each habit and pick goals that are achievable. You can always increase your goal over time. Habit formation is step #1.
Hold yourself accountable
When people create new habits, they often struggle with motivation. Create a tracking system on your phone (lots of great habit tracking apps). Checking off a box gives your body a nice dopamine reward and gamifies the process.
Enlist an accountability partner. Friends, coaches, and therapists all make great accountability partners. Notably, there’s a reason why the Navy Seals, Olympians, and top Founders all have coaches.
Review your data weekly. Reflect on what’s working and what’s not. Then make the appropriate adjustments. You may need to change the duration or habits to get the ball rolling.
Want an intro to Lucy? LMK and I’ll connect you!
As always, let me know if you have any questions and if you want an intro to any of the folks in this email (including the PS section 🎉).
Stay awesome,
Founder of Awesome People Ventures (join the syndicate here)
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Awesome People Continued 🥳
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Want intros to anyone here? Lmk and I’ll connect you!
Awesome People Bounty Board
Did someone say earn AWE tokens? Wait, what?! Why yes.
This is officially a semi-secret crazy experiment 🦄✨
This week on the bounty board we have:
Design awesome people “thank you NFTs”
Design an awesome people of the week webpage
Send us your fav consultant and freelancers recos — I’ll send you some 🦄
Check out the bounty board to learn more 👀
And respond to this email with how you want to get involved!
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