The Pomp Podcast - #1183 Matt Mochary | CEO Whisperer Shares His Secrets

Episode Date: April 5, 2023

Matt Mochary is a CEO and executive coach for some of the top tech CEOs in the world. In this conversation, we talk about how to run meetings, how to fire people, how to deal with investors, how to deal with co-founder problems, and how to run a more effective, productive, and efficient organization. ======================= Pomp writes a daily letter to over 200,000+ investors about business, technology, and finance. He breaks down complex topics into easy-to-understand language while sharing opinions on various aspects of each industry. You can subscribe at https://pomp.substack.com/

What's up everyone? This is Anthony Pompliano. Many of you know me as Pomp. You're listening to the Pomp Podcast, which is my effort to find the most interesting people in the world and sit with them for hours while I ask questions in an effort to learn. We have no advertisers on this podcast, so it would mean the world to me if you would subscribe to the show on your favorite audio platform, watch episodes on YouTube, and tell your friends and family about the podcast. My goal is to help millions learn from the world's most interesting people. So let's get into today's episode. Matt Moshari is a CEO coach for some of the top tech CEOs in the world.

In this conversation, we talk about everything from how to run meetings, how to fire people, how to deal with your investors, how to deal with co-founder problems, and how to run a more effective, productive, and efficient organization. I really enjoyed this conversation with Matt, and I hope you guys do as well. Once you get done listening, jump on Twitter and let us know what you liked, what you didn't like, what you agree with, and what you disagree with. We always appreciate the feedback, and it helps us create better episodes for each one of you. Here is my conversation with Matt Moshari. This episode is brought to you by Accenture.

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any opinion expressed by Pomp or his guests as a specific inducement to make a particular investment or follow a particular strategy, but only as an expression of his personal opinion. This podcast is for informational purposes only. All right, guys, I've got Matt here with me. Matt, I thought a great place for us to start is this idea of fear and anger. And I know that you usually will say fear and anger give bad advice, but I actually think it's an interesting point of fear and anger doesn't just give bad advice. It does all of the thinking for someone when they are in that fearful moment or they are filled with anger. Can you talk through a little bit in terms of how people can identify that they actually have a moment of fear or anger in the moment?

Yeah, that's a really good question. It's actually really tough for someone to self-identify when they're in fear or anger. Because what happens is a different part of the brain takes over. So when we're feeling joyful or peaceful or excited our prefrontal cortex is where the majority of our thought is coming from and that's creative thought and and so but when we feel fear and anger suddenly our thinking goes back into our amygdala and we don't notice it it's just thoughts appear to us but those thoughts are generated from our basal stem and they are it's called refer to as our reptile brain, because it has very simplistic thinking. The thinking is either it's fight or flight. Either I kill this threat or I run away from it. But again, because it is

just our thoughts, we don't notice the difference between these thoughts and those thoughts. And we can't tell. It basically envelops us like a shield, as if we were a goldfish in a pot of water. The goldfish doesn't know it's in water because it's just, that's everything. And so we don't know that we're in fear because it's just everything for us. And so really the easy way to identify we're in fear or anger is to have people around us that we have empowered and said, please let me know. And then they give a signal and they say, I perceive you to be in fear or they stick up their finger or something. And that is the only easy way that I know of to identify when I'm in fear or anger. The other way to self-identify, it requires a lot of meditation so that you can actually start to really notice the physical sensations in your body and the emotions that come from those sensations.

So you can actually notice when they occur when you're not meditating. But that requires a lot of meditation, a daily practice of maybe an hour a day, and I don't recommend it. Once somebody identifies whether themselves or an external source, you are in fear, you are filled with anger in this moment, the next thing that they will jump to is how do I switch back to a point of happiness, a point of control of my emotions, a point of calmness? Some people will argue, and there's plenty of literature that would support, that it is a physiological thing. You can actually do things to your body. Some people will say, no, it is merely something that can be done via the way you think. You don't actually make any changes to your body. Some people will say it could be food.

Some people will say that you need to just get away from the computer. There's all these different things that people will say, this is the path to gaining control back. Is it unique to everyone or are there one or two specific things that you say, no matter who you are, if you're in that moment of fear or anger, you can do this and it will return you back to some level of normalcy? Every single thing you just said works. So there are many, many paths to get out of fear and anger. Changing your physical environment, literally getting up and walking into another room, that's often enough. doing physical exercise to get the blood flowing that's often enough thinking what's good about this situation that's often enough so there are many ways to get out of fear and anger

and i recommend people just experiment with all of them you have this quote in uh in your book that says learning how to run a company while running a company is extremely hard and i found that fascinating because most founders try to learn how to run a business when they're running their first business. At the same time, I think that there would be an argument. You can't simply read about running a business. You have to run one to actually learn. How do you balance those two things? Learning on the job is hard, but also learning from a book or from a lecture or from watching a video is also hard, if not impossible. And so where is that balance? Yeah, it's again, it's a tough one. And you have to have the experience to know what the problems actually

are. And then you have to have the time to read and study the solutions to those problems, which you often don't have when you're actually running the business. I mean, that's why I wrote The Great CEO Within the way I did, which is just basically a bunch of bullet points. It's a bunch of one-page summaries of other 350-page books that have great solutions. But really, those solutions can be described in one or two pages. You don't need the 348 other pages. So yeah, I think summaries of books are fantastic while you are actually actively being a CEO. When I was reading the book, one of the questions I kept saying to myself as someone who runs a whole bunch of different organizations, some of them in the investment world, some of them as

operating businesses, is I want to hand this to as many of our leaders as possible. But is there any point in the organization where actually having them read the book gives them so much information that is not applicable to their day-to-day, like entry-level position, or your customer service rep, or maybe your engineers? Is it leadership only? Or do you think actually there's value in the book to everyone in the organization because it helps them think like a CEO? It's a great question. In fairness, I don't know what people's reaction to the book is. I wrote the book five years ago. I am constantly updating the comment on my own Google Doc, which is out there for free. I have heard people say that it's valuable for anyone in the

organization because then again, they understand how the CEO is thinking and they can better operate the way the CEO would hope that they would operate. But I think you're probably better off, the better person to answer because you've actually read the book as a user would, whereas I've never sat down and read the book as a user since I wrote it. I made two movies. I don't watch the movies. I mean, I've seen them a thousand times in the edit room, but i've never sat down and watched the movie as a new viewer so i don't know what the new reader of the book what their experience actually is you know that better than i do explain why you don't do that with the with the movies it's very common i i have these

conversations i don't go back and listen to the podcast episodes right there's many other people who have created things in the world they put it out into the world and they'll say i actually didn't read the book from cover to cover i didn't watch the movie i didn't listen to the podcast Why do you think people do that? It's listening to your own voice or listening to my own voice. It's like, to me, it's not interesting. Your voice is more interesting to me than mine is. I've already had these thoughts.

I've already documented them. Going back and experiencing them again doesn't add new thoughts or information to my life. I'm curious. I'd like to know more about what you have to say, what others have to say. I think that's what it is. Also, I've reviewed the content so many times in the writing and the thinking that I'm kind of like, kind of over it. There are a number of studies that show people hate their voice. That is like not just a thing you think.

It is definitely a thing that has been proven in that when they hear back their voice, they just kind of cringe and say, wow, I really sound like that. True, exactly. Let's talk about meetings, because I know you all have a very specific way that you think meetings should be run. I think this is probably one of the biggest areas where if a founder or leadership team can learn how to quickly do this, it can have a profound impact on the organization literally starting this afternoon. It's something that once you learn how to do it and you get the team up to speed on it, it begins to reap the benefits as an organization almost immediately. One of the things that I have personally experienced, and I'd love for you to kind of help me think through it, is in these meetings, a lot of times there are folks who have a lot of experience. They've been in a lot of meetings. They know what makes a good meeting, what doesn't

make a good meeting, but there are people who do not as well. And so what you're almost dealing with is like professional meeting attendees and amateur meeting attendees. How do you think about just getting everyone on the same kind of level playing field in terms of knowledge and expectations as a starting point before you even have the meeting? Yeah. Well, first of all, I recommend writing up a document of saying, here's what I think a good meeting should look like. Share it with everyone who's going to be in the meeting and say, do you agree?

Is this how we should do this? Or do you have other suggestions in better ways? And basically come to an agreement of how the meeting should be run before you even start it. And I think that a few key components are, you say there are a lot of people out there who know what good meetings look like. I'm not sure there are. I haven't experienced many good meetings out there.

I would say 95% of meetings suck, actually. And that's what most people have experience with. Most meetings are a lot of talking. And that is just super inefficient. There is now starting to be a culture that is spreading of written preparation because Amazon has so famously uses that. And that knowledge is spreading because Amazon is so successful. that people are starting to copy the Amazon behaviors. But that's only recent that that's happening.

And so I would say that, I mean, I'll just throw out, our meeting doc is free, it's available. I would, if you don't have a doc, start with that as a starting point. And there are a few key principles. One is, is that if a meeting doesn't have a meeting owner, it's guaranteed gonna be a crappy meeting in the end. Because no one's taking responsibility for how good the meeting is.

And if you have a meeting owner, then at the end of the meeting, that meeting owner should ask for feedback on how was this meeting. Absolute scale, one to five. Three being meeting expectation, five being it couldn't be any better, one being it couldn't be any worse. And then what'd you like about it and what wouldn't get it to the next level? And if you ask people to write their feedback and write it all at the same time, that process only needs to take two minutes. So it's not like you're sucking up a huge amount of meeting time to do that. And if you do those two things, you will eventually create great meetings. But in between, if you want to start off with better, I think that almost all meeting content can be created asynchronously.

And it's much more effective if it is. Because know that when people get together, that is very expensive time. So you want to use it for the stuff that can't be done asynchronously. And there's only two things that I know of that can't be done asynchronously. One, give and receive feedback. Why? Because when I give feedback to someone, there's a chance that they get offended, they get triggered, they get angry, they get fearful, they get sad.

And if that happens, I want to say, hey, wait a second. I meant that with love. I didn't mean to hurt you. I want you to succeed. And I believe this is what will help you succeed. So I can catch that and bring them back out of a state of fear, anger, or sadness. But if I give that feedback asynchronously, and they read it or listen to it or watch it in a video, and I don't see that reaction, and they get triggered, I can't stop it.

And because of confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is when we have a thought or a belief, we then start to see evidence that confirms that belief. And so because of confirmation bias, if someone feels anger when I give feedback and I don't stop it, within about 48 hours, they've collected enough evidence that I'm the devil that our relationship is then permanently destroyed or near permanently. It will require a lot of effort to repair. So that's why it's very dangerous to give feedback asynchronously. The second thing that needs to happen synchronously is to make people feel heard around a decision, around whatever comments and thoughts they had. To make someone truly feel heard, I've got to hear them not only read it, but hear them

say it, and even better, repeat back to them what I think they said until they say, yes, that's it. And so before I make a decision, I always want to make at least one or two key participants in the meeting feel heard and generally read everyone's and show everyone that I've read all their comments. And that needs to happen synchronously. So a few minutes around each decision, a few minutes of receiving feedback or giving feedback, and that's it. So a meeting needs only take 15 minutes to make key decisions and receive and give and receive feedback. But the preparation needs to be there in writing for that meeting to only take 15 minutes, because what needs to happen is all the topics need to be pre-written and ideally need to be pre-read and pre-commented.

Now, that's tough to organize everyone to pre-write 24 hours before the meeting and then everyone pre-read and pre-comment. That's pretty tough. That requires a lot of discipline. I don't know many companies that do that. Brex does. Brex is one example that at their leadership team, that's how they run their meetings. But most companies simply require pre-writes and then everyone reads synchronously at the beginning of the meeting and writes in their comments. That's how Amazon does it.

and that's much easier to achieve. When people are sitting there reading simultaneously and then leaving comments at the start of the meeting, how much of the discipline is that people actually put the comments in writing versus just pop your head up and say, hey, Joe, hey, Sarah, this is my thoughts on what you wrote here, right? The ability to speak seems faster, but actually may cause inefficiency for the entire team or those not in the meeting. So is that the main discipline point inside of the meeting is the commenting absolutely the main discipline point that before any verbal discussion begins there's one round of co-writing from everybody because it absolutely is faster for one person to talk rather than to write but for five people you can do a little

test have each person say their thing or have everyone co-write for two minutes at the same time. There's no question co-writing is way faster to get all the thoughts from the entire group. And what happens when you don't do co-writing is that the only people that speak are the people that are bold. There are always going to be two or three people that never speak. And the first time someone does co-writing, the manager, in my experience, the CEO, is always shocked. Like, oh my God, those two, three people, I thought they had nothing interesting to say. Turns out They have the best thoughts of anybody. They're just shy. So you're actually losing tremendously valuable information by allowing people to respond verbally rather than writing because the talkative people will just talk and the non-talkative people will just stay quiet and you'll lose their thoughts. There's a number of situations that founders have gone through over the last couple of years that they've brought up to me in private, in conversation, whether it's at a dinner and a social event or just a one-on-one meeting.

And I'd love to throw a couple of those ideas out at you. Some of them are actual problems. Some of them are things that are considering. And then maybe we could just riff on each one of these as a way for people to understand some of the thought process you guys have and some of the coaching that you do with some of the best CEOs in the world. The first is over the 2020 to 2023 time period, there was a number of pressure points within these organizations where employees would come to leadership teams and say, hey, I think that we should be doing more on X activity. A lot of times that was something that had social issues. It had to do with donating money off of the balance sheet. It had to do with participating in the local community or behind some sort of movement.

And I think leadership teams would sit there and say, well, we're here to do why, which is drive a profit, solve our customers' problems, and create a company. But also, I want to make sure that my employees feel heard, that they feel like we're doing the right thing, and that this is a place that they want to work at. And so many times what I saw founders doing was they kind of just threw their hands up and were like, I don't know what the answer is. And so they would talk to each other, but they were talking to other people who were throwing their hands up saying, I don't know what the answer is. And so I'm sure you dealt with this a couple of times in your coaching, but just how should founders think about those situations? Are there things they could do in advance to help prevent it getting to that point? Or are there things they could do to address it immediately so that it doesn't become a problem and instead maybe they look at it as an opportunity for a positive outcome? Yeah, I think the key here is for each founder, there's no question that founder led product companies have a better track record than professional, you know, hired gun led product companies, because the founder has a knowledge of the customer that is so deep because they did it from day one. They talked to so many customers, understood the problem and created the original solution. And I know you're wondering, what does this have to do with, you know, these culture things that I just talked about?

And here's what it has to do with. It's key that the founder really enjoy the company that they've built so they stay there. And I've had founders that say to me, Matt, I no longer enjoy this company. I show up to work, whether in person or remote, and it's not fun anymore. And to those founders, I've said, well, what would make it fun? What would be a company that you'd enjoy? And they say, if it did this, this, and this. I go, great.

Have it do those three things. And they say, but if that happens, maybe there'll be a front page article about me in the New York Times bashing me. And I say, okay, so there'll be a front page article about you in the New York Times. And then what? Because if you don't do that, you're going to leave this company. Is the outcome going to be worse than that? They go, no. So then they post a letter and say, hey, you know, these issues that people talk about,

we're not going to deal with them in this company. We're going to deal with the mission of this company. If you want to deal with those things, you deal with them on your own time privately. If you want to be at a company that is a political platform, please join another company that's not this company. That's one example of what you could do. Or there are other founders that are very excited about these political issues and want their company to be a platform. To them, I say, great, make your company a platform. The only time that I push founders is when they say they want an apolitical company, but they're too afraid to make that announcement and declare that.

And that's where fear is giving bad advice, and that's where I push founders. In these situations, it seems like employees over the last couple of years have been emboldened. They get kind of a bigger voice internally. is the expectation and what founders kind of have to get comfortable with that when you come out and say this is going to be an apolitical organization you just have to be comfortable with some of the employees leaving if they don't want that environment and like that's just part of this exercise absolutely yes i mean that that's the whole point of values values is behaviors and the whole point of saying these are the behaviors that we'll have is that they're a

way of identifying who should join your company and who should not. And of the people who are already at your company, who should stay and who shouldn't. Because the behaviors should be very distinctive. And we're seeing this now. A lot of CEOs are saying, you know what, we've been remote for a while, but I don't want to be remote. I want to go back into the office. And they say, is that okay for me to say? I said, of course, it's okay for you to say. Just be ready though. There are going to be a bunch of people that don't want to go back, and they shouldn't be there. There are going to be three categories of people.

There are going to be people who are really excited to be back in the office. Great. There are going to be the people who aren't excited to be back in the office, and they'll just leave on their own because they're smart enough to realize that they should do what matches their own values, and they should find a company that still is remote. The dangerous part is there are going to be a bunch of people who aren't going to be happy, but will be too afraid to leave. and those are the people that you as founder need to help them self-identify and help them find a

great job in a remote company because your company no longer is so if you create an apolitical organization yes great expect that there will be people who will say okay i don't want to be part of this i want to go join a company that is political those people are fine that's not dangerous the dangerous ones are the ones who stay and are frustrated those are the ones that you need to identify and say, hey, this place is not for you. Let's go find you a place that is for you. Another situation that founders seem to be running into over and over and over again is they know that there's somebody who's on their team that is not meeting the standard or meeting the bar, but they don't like conflict. And so they try to avoid that conflict. That then permeates

down and the leadership team does the same thing many times. And when the leadership team does that, the middle management does that, and you kind of go all the way through the organization. And so naturally, some of the people who should be let go, they kind of stick around. If we go back to that moment where it is one-on-one, the manager and the managed, there has to be a conversation. What is the conversation that people can have so that it is a thoughtful, kind, but very obvious and strict, we are letting you go, and here is what is going to happen from here? Yeah, it's a difficult conversation. And most people don't like having difficult conversations.

Some people mind it more than others. I've had founders who have gone into full panic attacks, knowing that they, we together have decided that they need to let this person go. And when they actually go to do it, they go into a panic attack beforehand. And then they don't. and I so until a manager or CEO has let go of one person I don't trust that they know how I don't trust that they're able to and the way that I the script that I give managers to have this difficult conversation is really what they're what they're fearful of is the impact that it's going to have on the person they're letting go and we talked before about the prefrontal cortex

in the amygdala. The amygdala is where fear and anger occur. The amygdala usually gets triggered because it's surprised. Something happens suddenly. But if you let a person know, hey, something's about to come and they can prepare themselves, then they often don't get triggered. They go, and so what I do is I say to someone, is now a good time to talk? And I say, yeah, Great. I want to let you know. In fact, let's do this for real. How about I fire you?

Perfect. I've been waiting to get fired from some of my responsibilities. Excellent. Excellent. So here it goes. The first thing I'm going to do is let you know, hey, this is going to be a difficult conversation. You're likely going to feel some combination of fear, anger, sadness. I want to let you know that so you can prepare for that.

Are you ready? Yes. I'm letting you go today. Today is your last day at work here. Let me explain to you why. And I do explain your, we need only outperformers here. Your performance has been good, but not great. And I want to help you find a place where your performance will be great, where they really need you.

So I realize this is a traumatic experience to lose your primary income, and I don't want it to be traumatic. So I'm going to do two things. One, I'm going to give you severance of three months so that you have enough time to not only find, but also start getting paid in your next role. And two, I want to be your agent. I want to actively help you identify what would be a phenomenal role for you, either start your own company or role in another company that you actually love and you do fantastic at. And then I want to actively help you go find that job. Like me, be your agent. I will reach out to my network and encourage people to hire you. I won't just be passive and say, hey, I'll give

your reference. No, I'll be active. Those are the two things that I'd like to give to you. And third, actually, I think about it is this is a traumatic experience. You likely will be feeling fear, anger. It'll be hard to process. And I don't want you to process it alone. So I'd like you to be able to have a therapist that you can talk to weekly during these three months. And I would like to pay for that therapist. It'll be probably $200 a session. So $800 a month. And I would like to pay for those three months for you. You find a therapist that you're comfortable with, but I would like to pay for that. So everything there makes sense and was done expertly.

You are an absolute high-quality firer of a manager. There's one thing that I think a lot of people question. You becoming the agent, you going out actively and trying to help them find their next role. If this was an underperformer at your business, how do you balance that with recommending to friends, former colleagues other people in your network an individual that maybe you think could be successful somewhere else but maybe you think couldn't be yeah absolutely it's a great point and this is the pushback that people have and a lot of times they're angry like this person screwed me they you know they were on a key project they told me they would succeed and

get it done they didn't get it done and that screwed me with a customer and we lost customers over it i'm so angry at this person i want to punish them i want to hurt them that's just anger talking. The fact is, is that that person, I am responsible for hiring a person who wasn't right for the role. I am responsible for ineffectively onboarding that person and not giving them enough context to succeed. I am responsible for not managing them well and giving them feedback ongoing saying, hey, this needs to improve. Here's what you need to do. Make it improve. I fail to do all those three things. So I need to take responsibility for that.

And also I need to recognize that this person wasn't right for this role in my company, but there is something that this person is passionate about. And if they're passionate about it, they're likely gonna be great at it. And I just need to ask them and interview them. What are you passionate about? You clearly weren't passionate about this role,

but what are you passionate about? And let's go see if there's an income producing, business or job around that passion. And if there is, then I'm very happy to recommend that for you. But am I going to recommend you for the exact same role that you had in my company and another company? No way. Yeah. The other piece of maybe insight or advice that you give in the book, and I know in your coaching, is this idea of a CEO for a day, where you or others would go into a company and basically run the business for a day. And it's a way for you to teach a CEO how to operate, how to run business, or how to run meetings, how to interface with their leadership

team or other employees, things like that. And what I took away from that is this idea of kind of left seat, right seat, right? So as you are coming in to do that for a day, the founder is basically getting a front row seat to saying, this is the behavior, these are the actions, these are the conversations that happen when somebody is effectively running the organization. And that's very, very helpful for them. In the firing example, it would be weird, I think, for me to fire someone and have like a trainee sitting next to me as I did it, but maybe not. Is that appropriate? Is it inappropriate? Is there a way for people who need to learn how to let people go get it by watching someone else do it without it being inhumane to the person who's

being fired? Absolutely. I've done it dozens of times. Okay. And, and oftentimes and I've never had anyone say, Matt, what the hell's going on? Why is this person here? Because they know this person is shadowing me because I've sort of announced, Hey, this person will be shadowing me this week, this month, this year. Or I'm showing a manager how to do it. And that manager is the manager of this person, but that manager has never let anyone go before. So I'm letting the person go. I come in as CEO. And so it feels very natural. Again, I've never had any pushback. Yeah, that is fascinating. Let's switch gears from kind of internal and maybe now to external type communication. Obviously, there is an economic

crisis or chaos, uncertainty that's unfolding right now. And I think a lot of founders are kind of stepping up and they're saying, okay, I can't be the peacetime CEO. I need to be more of the wartime CEO. People will debate, isn't it always wartime? But let's just use that analogy for the moment. In those moments, there is a change in communication that I see founders taking, whether it is on podcast, in interviews with the press, in the way that they communicate on Twitter or other social media. What are maybe some things that you've seen founders do in these moments of uncertainty and chaos that they should not do. So what are like the things to avoid in these moments? Hmm. Well, I've seen a lot of people, things that people are doing that they should be doing.

Okay. So let's start with those. They're sort of investors have two modes and investors are putting their foot either very hard on the gas pedal or very hard on the brake. And I'm going to go back. You said your question about founders, Matt, why are you talking about investors? And I'll tell you why, because investors have a huge influence on founder behavior. Correct. So what happens is when times are good and the stock market values are going up and investors tell their founders, grow as quickly as you can, because whoever becomes number one in this market category is going to get a 10x result versus number two. So spend whatever money you need to spend. Hire whoever you need to hire. Pay for whatever ads you need to pay for to gain that

number one market share. They actually encourage the founder to spend more to hire more. Then all of a sudden, the stock market goes down. Values start going down. Investors get really scared. Investors go, oh, no, if this company requires another round of investment, then my investment is going to effectively get washed out. By the way, founders will often get re-upped by the new investors. So a down round for founders and current employees is not such a big deal. But a down round for existing investors is a huge deal. So they don't want this down round to occur.

And so they put a lot of pressure on the founder, slash costs, fire people, let go of the team, again, because they're trying to preserve their own equity so it doesn't get diluted. And both of these answers are extreme, but founders, especially younger founders, newer founders, don't know, so they follow both of these. And the answer is you shouldn't hire so much because the more you hire, the more context gets lost and you're now giving responsibility to people who don't understand the customer fully. They don't understand how the company operates and it makes it harder to operate the company. The more people there are in a group, the harder it is to get anything done. So there are plenty of examples I have of 30, 40, 50, even 80% of a department or a company leaving, and not the worst people, sometimes the best people. And that department then performs better, just because there are fewer people around. So hiring people is a negative.

And you certainly don't want to hire a lot of people fast. But then on the other hand, cutting costs dramatically actually is quite positive. But I mean, you see the Elon Musk example, everyone predicted that, you know, Twitter was going to shut down and he let go of 80% of the people. It's going to like the website was going to stop working. Well, of course, that didn't happen. Works just fine. And so when companies get reduced headcount-wise, someone will take over, someone will get done the actions that need to get done. Because when you were 10 people, those actions occurred.

When they were 20 people, those actions occurred. When you're 50 people, when you're 1,000 people, when you're 10,000 people, you can go back to almost any number and they can maintain your product. So the good things that I see happening when we need to go into a cut cost mode is that founders are being didactic. Founders are saying, I am now the decision maker and you marketing, here is the budget you get, period, for this coming year. It's no longer you come to me and tell me what budget you need and argue for it. And so they're simply being given an envelope. They're simply being given a, they're being given the budget.

They're not lobbying for the budget. And that is very good behavior because inevitably, if each department is lobbying for their budget, the only thing that happens, they lobby for more and more and more money. No one's thinking about the bottom line. No one's thinking about profitability. There's only one person, maybe two, who are thinking about profitability, and that is the CEO and maybe the CFO. So the CEO becoming didactic about, here's the money you get, do whatever you can with that

money. That's actually the most effective solution. Let's see what the negative behaviors are that I'm seeing. I'm really not seeing many. Now, maybe I'm coaching really good CEOs and I'm recommending to them behaviors and they're doing those behaviors. So I'm not seeing the negative ones. I guess the negative one is really when the times are good and investors are pushing fast growth that founders actually go and hire at these insane rates. That is very bad behavior. One of the things that I took away from your book that I just loved was the idea of the energy audit. And it fits nicely with this framework that I've always had, which is if you were to take a human being, forget any industry, job, or geography, and you simply said to them,

here are the best things to do for your health. It would be things like sleep eight hours, don't eat processed food, get outside around the sun, exercise, right? Very simple kind of timeless health advice. Startup founders basically live a life that does everything the exact opposite.

They usually don't sleep a lot. They usually eat pretty bad. They usually don't exercise that much. And they almost never go outside because they're sitting at their computer regardless of where it is. Is there any way that you found with a number of your coaching clients to get them to model the better behavior, but still feel like they're being productive and spending the time necessary to build a startup once there's so much work to do? Yeah, you're not going to like my answer.

That's okay. This is an area that if the founder's feeling good, we leave it as is. If it ain't broke, we don't fix it. I have lived both of those lives. And I've enjoyed both of them. And I felt good during both of them. And my body and brain felt good during both of them. There's a time when I slept three hours a night for six months. And I was fine. I performed just fine. I got a little tired in the afternoon. That's it. And so I don't think that, again, if someone is feeling depressed, if someone is feeling like they're not functioning well and they want to improve it great we go to

all the techniques you just mentioned and they'll work but if someone is working 18 hours a day hardly sleeping not exercising and feeling good we say fine keep going yeah that's pretty incredible Another area that seems most founders are trying to figure out is communicating when you have remote employees and you have in-office employees. And for me personally, it's very unique because you want to have the camaraderie, the human face-to-face interaction inside of meetings, be able to walk over to people's desks and kind of do the impromptu stuff. obviously much harder to do with the remote employees. And then you start to deal with people who are remote, feel like the people in the office have an advantage, not necessarily in terms of like career progression, but just they're able to get access to more information. They themselves can walk over to a desk or be able to, you know, kind of collaborate in a more

impromptu way. How can the people in the office make the people outside of the office feel like they are just as involved? I know that you talk a lot about what they can do in a meeting, but are there other things they can do outside of a specific meeting to make sure that there's more of that sense of belonging or camaraderie? There are things that you can do, sure, but they're not going to be 100% effective. And you talk about it's not career progression, but it actually is career progression. Because if someone has more information and they therefore can perform tasks more to the liking of the manager, then the manager is going to say, oh, I like what you're doing. I'm going to, you know, give you more and more responsibility. And so there absolutely is

an advantage to being in person and developing those relationships with the manager. So hybrid, you're describing a hybrid organization. You know, I got this from Sid Sabrandage at GitLab, and he famously, you know, says that hybrid organizations are very dangerous. Either you have it all in person or you have it all remote. But when you have a combination, no matter how disciplined and well-meaning the in-person team is to try to include the remote people and how would they do that? Every single time there was an informal conversation, they would jump on a Zoom call and pull in the remote people. I mean, give me a break. That's impossible. So the answer is, I think, as an organization, pick one or the other. Be an all-in-person or be an all-remote.

But don't be mixed. And know that if you choose one or the other, you'll lose a certain percentage of your team. And yes, you'll take a hit. And 30% of your team will leave. And they'll go join a pure of the other version. If you create an in-person and they don't want to be in-person, they'll go join an all remote company, but you will then attract people who really want to be in an all in-person company. And those people will join you and they will do very well. And within 12 months, you'll have a much better organization that's performing the way you want it to perform. And the right people will be there. So yes, it's a short-term investment. There will be turnover, but it's worth it within 12 months.

That makes sense. Let's talk about the coaching profession. I've actually seen a number of founders now start to become coaches themselves. You've had a fantastic career, are definitely seen in Silicon Valley and other industries as one of the best coaches out there. What is that like from your side of the table? We've talked a lot about how founders can improve and how founders can take some of this information and implement it. But what about from the coach's perspective? Is there anything that really stands out over the last couple of years that has either changed or surprised you? well first of all i think it's a great job i freaking love it in fact for a decade i didn't take any money for doing it because i was having so much fun i want to make sure that i only coach people that i love and only did things that i love so if i didn't take money or equity or make investment then there'd be no logical reason for me to spend time with someone or spend time doing something that i didn't absolutely love because i was doing it for free and so that was a great filter for me because in my mind, if there's money, I will get distracted by the money. And so I illuminated that for myself. But now I know I love coaching. And my coaches have all

asked me to create software to run their companies the way that I run it. I have everything in Google Docs, but it doesn't scale. Google Docs doesn't scale. So I said, okay, I'll write the software, but I don't want to pay for it out of my own pocket. So you all have to pay your fair share. So now money gets charged and they pay. But the surprising thing for me is that how amazing coaching is. I think it's the best freaking job that I've ever heard of. Two reasons. One, I become really close friends with the people I coach.

I mean, really deep connection. So, and that's something I value tremendously. I love having deep connection with people. I love having close friends and now I get to have many more and I actually get to choose the people that I become close friends with. I mean, it's amazing. And then the second thing is I get to pretend that I'm actually helping a company become better. And the analogy I'll give is I once went to a friend's hunting ranch in South Texas and he had like 10 of us there and there was like a pond and we all sort of sat around, stood around the pond.

We each had a shotgun and birds would fly over and we'd shoot at them and I would shoot and I couldn't hit a thing and I was getting frustrated. So I finally saw the person who was the most successful and I just walked over and stood next to that person. And then a bird would come over, we'd both shoot, bird would come down and we weren't exactly sure who hit the bird and clearly it was the other guy,

but I could pretend that maybe it was me. And so when I coach, I can pretend that maybe I'm in some small way responsible for the success of this organization. And so that's a lot of fun too. And yet, I don't have to do any work. I don't do any actions. Like we sit there in the meeting. I show up for the coaching meeting.

We talk about the issues. We talk about the next actions. We write them down. I hold the CEO accountable for doing these next actions, but I don't have any. So it's only the cream. it's only the funnest part of the job and not the difficulty, frankly, which is actually doing the work. And so I can't think of a better role. I can't think of a better position, a more fun one, maybe professional surfer. Other than that, it's the best role I know.

A lot of investors get vaulted into the coach or advisor role, whether they want to or not, and whether even the founders realize that they are putting their investors in that role or not. As you know, many of those investors have no experience being a coach in the classical sense. They are kind of winging it or they're giving their personal opinions, maybe without as much thought as they should. Do you think that all investors should go through some sort of training or spend time really understanding the different kind of day-to-day actions of somebody like you as a coach? Or is actually the investor role maybe something a little bit different and actually the founder getting their personal opinions without kind of a more structured

coaching approach is valuable and you want to be able to give them that? Well, I don't think there's actually too much difference between what I do and what investors do. There's one key difference. And that is I make a CEO feel that I truly understand the position that they're in before I give my advice. Most people don't do that. Most people just, CEO says, here's the situation. Investor goes, here's the answer. And then the reaction that the CEO has, which he probably won't say, she won't say, is, eh, that doesn't feel like it's customized to my situation. That feels just like something that you did or you saw somewhere else. And you're like taking that as a cookie cutter solution and applying it to me. Therefore, it doesn't resonate.

Therefore, I don't know that I'm actually going to do it. And the only difference between me and that investor is that CEO tells me what the situation is. And I go, okay, I think what I'm hearing you say is that here's the situation. Here's what's going on. Here's how you're feeling. Is that right? And the CEO goes, yes, that's it. Or the CEO says, no, not quite. And they change it a little bit. And I say, okay, now what I think I'm hearing you say is, and I repeat back what they said in the second time. Is that right? And they go, yes, that's it. And I go, great. Here are my thoughts. And I share them. And the founder goes, wow, that's awesome. I think I'm going to do that. Because the founder feels that my advice is tailored to their

situation because they feel that I actually understand their situation. But if I just jump in and give advice without first making the founder feel heard, and we'll put a link to how to make someone feel heard, got a whole doc on it. If I do that, then the CEO's reaction is the same as it is to the investor. Like, eh, that feels like a cookie cutter solution. It doesn't resonate with me. So every investor can become an effective coach if all they do is make the CEO feel heard before the investor gives advice. That's it. It's incredible how simple it is. When you think of the coaching profession today, Is this something where there's a limiting factor on how many people you can actually talk with and kind of keep up with?

And is that some way solved with technology? There's a lot of maybe hype also going as far as maybe promise of some of these AI technologies where people think that you could be able to talk to it and it'll give you advice and it can customize it, things like that. How do you think about humans versus technology and maybe the limiting factor to a human-led coaching business? Yeah, I haven't figured out a way to scale it. I can coach about 25 CEOs. And that means I'm only coaching CEOs and I'm only talking to them once or twice a month. And these are long, in-depth, formal coaching sessions. I can respond to pings 24-7, 365 with 10, 15-minute conversations when something comes up in the moment. But like the long, we formally go through, did you do the actions from before? What are your next actions towards your priorities?

What are the issues you run into? Let's unpack those. What feedback do you have for me? No, that takes about two hours. So we do that about once a month. And it's usually enough because then we come up with a whole bunch of actions that people need to actually have time to go do before we want to sort of create a whole another list of actions for the CEO. So I can do about, I mean, at the max, I can probably do 30, which I have

in the past, but that feels like a lot. And that's also me just coaching CEOs. It's not what Bill Campbell did. What Bill Campbell did was he would coach the CEO and every member of the executive team. So he was coaching 12 people in each company. And the value of that is he could then pull out the issues that the exec team members were talking about, but were too afraid to bring up in the exec team meeting. So he would bring them up. And that's an incredibly valuable function. And I'm not doing that. I'm just talking to CEOs because selfishly, I just enjoy coaching CEOs more. So it's a selfish choice on my part. I'm not saying it's more effective. It's just better from me. And the, but there's, I have not found a way to scale that number. So you can either

coach, if you're coaching 12 people in the exec team, I think you probably coach two companies at a time or 25 to 30 individual CEOs at a time. I don't see how people can coach more and, you know, chat GPT. I mean, there's companies that have already made AI versions of me and I've seen the results and they're not that good. They don't make people feel heard. They don't make people feel like they really understand what the person is saying and the situation they're in. And that's key. And so, um, I think we're a long way from being able to AI coaching and, um, at least the way I do it. And, uh, so yeah, I love to find a way to scale myself, but I haven't found it yet. What is the craziest situation that you've been on the other side of the phone?

So I'm talking 2 o'clock in the morning. You get the phone call. There's panic, fear, uncertainty, et cetera. Don't use names if you don't want to. But just give people a sense for there's the, hey, how are you? We have a scheduled call. Let's go through the priorities. And then there's the houses on fire help.

What are those situations like? or what's an example of one? Two examples come to mind. One is, I referred to it before when founder, we'd agreed that he needed to let go an executive, but when the time came, he literally couldn't sleep for days and nights beforehand and was having full blown anxiety attacks and like was just in a panic. And, and he called me and said, I think I need to go to the hospital. I don't know what, and I, I just, I mean, those are the moments I love. And I just talked him through what is the worst thing that's going to happen when you do this. And once he had to say that, he realized, oh, actually that's not that bad. And then I said, okay, now you're going to,

now you're then therefore going to do this. You're going to let the person go. He says, no I still don't want to I said okay how about I get on the phone with you he's like well I don't know that's like weird it's like okay who else will you have there on the phone with you and he had his COO so who was not in fear so she was going to do fine so we had him do it with his COO as you talk about two people on the call and she was able to calm him down enough that he was able to let the exec go. And as soon as he did, I mean, hours later, he called me and said, Matt, it's incredible. I feel so good now. I feel like a huge ton of weight has been lifted off my shoulders. I couldn't have imagined that I would feel this way so soon. And this is amazing. Now

I realize that I was in total panic before. Couldn't see that I was in panic. I thought that it was rational. Now I realize it was completely irrational. And so that was probably the most extreme. I mean, the guy literally thought he had to go to the hospital and then hours later was completely and utterly fine. The other ones that are really fun for me are when people, either co-founders or CEO and board member or CEO and exec team member, just hate each other and CEO and exec team member is pretty easy. CEO just lets the exec team member go, but investor and CEO kind of hard to separate. Co-founders kind of hard to separate. And so I do this thing with them called conflict resolution, which I've again written up. And

there's a doc, there's a whole process you can follow on your own. It doesn't require me or anybody else. And it's just a matter of each person saying around each emotion, how they feel around joy and around anger. What are the thoughts they have of the other person? And we go first through the joys. So we confirm that these people actually do see value in each other. And then we say, but I also feel anger and hear my thoughts around that. And we have the other person make the first person feel heard, repeat it back, and then decide if they want to change that thing. and almost always they do. And so we have, if we do this on both sides and both people make the other feel heard, and then both people accept the feedback and agree to change their behavior.

I've gone from, my record was, and I won't name the company, but it was a large company. It was over $10 billion market cap. And it was the only time I ever talked to those two founders. Founder called me up, said, you know, I don't know you, Matt, but would you help? I said, sure. And it was co-founders. And basically, the company was about to break apart. They were about to just shut the whole thing down because the two hated each other. And we met on the back porch of one of the co-founders, the one who was saying, I'm out.

And that one, like, ran all of engineering. Like, if that guy left, the whole thing would shut down. And I timed it. it took 29 minutes from the start of the conversation to the two of them hugging each other, crying and saying, I love you. And that company continues on today and exists and is doing phenomenally well. What was that conversation like? It was exactly this, like, Hey, I went each one. When you think about when John, you think about George and I'm making these names up. When you think about George and you feel joy, what do you

think about? He says, oh, well, all the great things we've done and all the great things we're going to do. And it's like, great. And then George, when you think about John, feel joy, what thoughts come to your mind? Well, it's, you know, he's so great at this and he's so great at that. And we started this company together and there were so many good moments and these are the good moments. Great. So now they established this positive link. They see value in each other. Then I say, okay, now, George, when you think about anger and you think about this person, And what thoughts come to mind? They say, well, it pisses me off that he does da, da, da, da, da, da, da.

Great. John, what'd you hear? What I heard is, well, when I do da, da, da, da, da, George gets pissed off. And then I say, John, is that right? And John says, yes, that's right. Great. George, do you want to piss off John? No.

Great. George, will you change these behaviors? Do you accept this feedback? Will you change it? He said, yes, I'm going to change the behaviors. Great. What will you do to change the behaviors? I'll do A, B, and C. Great. Let's write that down as an action. Okay. George, if John does that, will that satisfy you? George says, yes, that will satisfy me. Great. Now, let's do the reverse. We do the reverse, and the whole thing takes another five, ten minutes. Now, we're done. Now, guys, do you feel better about this? Do you feel more resolved? And each

one says, yes, I absolutely do. Great. Now I'd like you to either shake hands or hug or high five, whatever you have the most physical contact you've had in the past. I'd like you to do it now. And they do. They hug and it's over. I've done this dozens of times. And each and every time, the only time I actually am willing to do it myself is when people tell me this relationship is done. That's when I'll come in. If they say, ah, this relationship is challenging. Like, okay, you can figure it out on your own. Here are the steps to take, do it on your own. But if they say the relationship is done, then I get really excited. That's when I step in and facilitate it. Cause I want to see if I can pull it out of the fire. And so far,

I think I've done it every time. I don't think I've, I can't remember a situation where it didn't work. So this is a great lead in into my question that I want to end on, which is, do you enjoy finding the worst most screwed up absolutely horrible situations and that's kind of like your world series or your super bowl is more so the the companies that are messed up the co-founder relationships uh the inefficient organizations or do you enjoy going into a business that is pretty good but man if we unlock these one or two things then it can be absolutely amazing. Do you enjoy the average to above average, or do you enjoy the absolute horrible situations and you got to go in and clean it up? Neither. What I enjoy the most

are the best companies that are performing incredibly well. And then when I go in and coach them there's always something that's fucked up and i go find it and i say that's what i want to deal with and then we do and then we fix it and then that company that was already doing incredibly well then starts going like this and that's what i love the most that's a great way to look at it is basically the the thing they don't even need they don't even know needs to be unlocked. If you're able to go ahead and unlock that to a company that's already doing very well, then it's just unlimited future potential. That's right. And again, that's what I get to pretend like I actually had some input over the success. I appreciate your humility,

but your reputation precedes you for many people who are listening or watching this. And you have been absolutely fantastic to some of the top CEOs in the world. So I think that you're doing just fine. So please keep doing what you're doing. Where can we send people to find you on the internet, find out about coaching or find your book? The website is mosharymethod.com, M-O-C-H-A-R-Y method. We've got a group of coaches that are just phenomenal that are available to help CEOs become better CEOs and build better companies. We've got, my book is available on Amazon, but also online for free. And then we've got a whole curriculum that's also available online for free. I think if you just do a Google search of Moshari, it'll come up.

Yeah, we believe in giving content away for free. We're not trying to monetize content. We want everyone to run great companies. And the more people that can, the better. The only reason we have coaching is because there are some people that want a sort of very specific implementation of what we're doing. But one of the funnest experiences I have is I once had investors say, hey, this is my best performing portfolio company. Matt, would you be willing to coach them

so they do even better? I said, sure. So we connected and the CEO was happy to talk to me. He'd read my book three years ago and loved it. So he was happy to talk to me. And I said, great, should we do some coaching together? And he clearly knew all my stuff and was using all my stuff.

And he's like, Matt, I gotta tell you something. I love your stuff, but I implemented it in the company, all of it, three years ago, and it all worked. And the company's doing incredibly well, and I don't really have any problems now. And so I don't think I even need your coaching. And I said, that's fantastic. That's actually the best answer I've ever heard. So our intent is for people to do this on their own, but most people aren't like that guy. Most people want to be a little bit of hand-holding while they're implementing these things to make sure they get implemented at the right time first, which is fine. But if there are people that are willing to experiment on their own,

that's awesome too. I love it. And kudos to that person for being ahead of the curve. Matt, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. I learned a ton today. I think the audience will as well and we will definitely do this again in the future fantastic thanks so much