Entrepreneurial Equilibrium: Strategies for Managing Startup Stress

✅ Entrepreneurial Equilibrium: Alyssa Cohn’s Strategies for Managing Startup Stress

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Key Highlights: 📌
🧠 Startup Stress Unpacked: Alyssa delves into the high-pressure world of entrepreneurship, sharing insights on why startup founders are particularly prone to anxiety and how they can navigate these stressors.
🔄 The Learning Lab Concept: Explore Alyssa's transformative concept of the 'learning lab,' a mindset shift that turns challenges into opportunities for growth and innovation.
🧘‍♂️ Self-Care as Startup Strategy: Alyssa provides practical advice on self-care rituals for entrepreneurs, emphasizing the importance of sleep, fitness, and the powerful 'highlight reel' technique for maintaining mental equilibrium.

Join us on the Anxiety at Work podcast with our esteemed guest Alyssa Cohn, a titan in the field of leadership coaching and an inspiring figure in startup circles. Alyssa offers a treasure trove of strategies that help founders and their teams foster resilience and maintain a sense of balance amidst the startup chaos.

Drawing from her forthcoming book and her experience as a leadership coach, Alyssa offers transformative approaches for personal and professional development. Whether it's mastering the art of self-improvement, harnessing the power of self-forgiveness, or building a culture of psychological safety, Alyssa's methodologies are groundbreaking.

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#Entrepreneurship #StartupStress #LeadershipCoaching #AlyssaCohn #MentalHealth #SelfCare #LearningLab #AnxietyatWork #BusinessResilience #StartupCulture #InnovativeMindset #LeadershipPodcast

Transcript

You know, we need people around us that can guide us through tough times, can guide us through anxiety, stress, especially at work. And that's why I'm so excited to welcome our sponsor to the show, LifeGuides. LifeGuides is a peer-to-peer community that helps people navigate through their day-to-day stressors by providing a place of empathy, listening, wisdom, and support with a guide who has walked in your shoes experiencing the same challenge or life experience as you. You know, when we are anxious, we need help. We need a guide. And that's what LifeGuides does. So to offer your team this service and show that you care, all you got to do is go to LifeGuides.com forward slash schedule a demo and add the code Healthy2021 into the text box and you'll get two months of their free service. Think about it, two months to have a life guide to walk you through anxiety in life and anxiety at work. So excited to welcome them to our podcast. Remember, it's lifeguides.com forward slash schedule a demo and in the text box, all you got to do is put in Healthy2021. Thank you, Lifeguides. Welcome to the Anxiety at Work podcast. I'm Chester Elton and this is my co-author and dear friend, Adrian Gostin. We hope the time you spend with us today will help remove the stigma of anxiety and mental health in the workplace and your personal life. We invite experts from the world of work and life to give us ideas and tools to deal with anxiety in our world. And you're in for a treat today. Our guest is our good friend Alyssa Cohn. Alyssa was named the top 100 leadership speakers. She is a guest lecturer at Harvard and at Cornell Universities and has coached public and political figures, including the former Supreme Court Justice of Sri Lanka and the first female minister of the transitional government of Afghanistan. She has written for Forbes, HBR and Inc. And our favorite is an amateur rap artist, and we have the video to prove it. So welcome to our humble podcast, Alyssa. Thank you guys so much. It's such a pleasure to be here. I'm so happy to be here. It's so great to have you on the show, Alyssa. You know, your expertise, and Alyssa is part of the Marshall Goldsmith 100 coaches that we're also a part of, so, and you bring such a unique expertise in entrepreneurship and startups, and that's something we haven't focused as much on in our Anxiety at Work podcast series. So, first question, are there unique stressors that startup leaders and their team members face that we should be maybe aware of in, and also, you know, understanding how to deal with to help employees feel mentally and emotionally safe. Yeah, thanks Adrian. It is like such a significant topic in the world of entrepreneurship, and it's becoming much more spoken about. So the truth is that founders, entrepreneurs, startup founders are more than 30% more likely to suffer anxiety and depression as compared to their counterparts. So the important thing about that to know is that startup founders anyway have a propensity towards maybe anxiety, and then they're putting themselves into an intense pressure cooker. Starting a startup is both a roller coaster and also a marathon and also a set of sprints. It is incredibly intense. It's the ups and the downs and managing them all in the space of just minutes at a time at sometimes and basically it's unrelenting pressure for years. So for all of those reasons, it's easy to understand why anxiety inside of entrepreneurship is such an important topic. You guys didn't mention I'm also writing a book. I wrote a book. It's coming out in October. It's called From Startup to Grownup. And in that book, I devote an entire chapter to the notion of how do you take care of yourself as an entrepreneur, as a founder, because it's such an important topic. Yeah, I mean, you covered every sprint, marathon. You know, when you are a startup, when you are an entrepreneur, you've got all kinds of stressors, right? From funding to making payroll, personality issues, finding and retaining talent, developing your culture. Talk about handling the tough situations by managing yourself, as you're gonna do in your book. Maybe give us a little preview about making it in a learning lab, we talk about, you talk about. We love the idea of making difficult conversations all about improvement rather than admonition. And could you explain this idea about the learning lab environment? Yes, thanks Chester. I really think, so when you have so many ups and downs, and by the way, the ups are nice but they're also intense and the downs, they're not so great and they happen all the time, you have to find ways to take perspective. So one of my tools to give founders take perspective is to turn things into a learning lab. And what that means is get really curious about what just happened. And rather than judge it, and rather than let it affect you, turn it into an opportunity to learn, to see what you can mine from the situation, see how you can make yourself better. One thing about founders is they're obsessed with self-improvement, making themselves better and their companies better. And basically, if you turn it into something that you can use, that is where you can find gold in it. But also for the point about anxiety, was such an important topic that you guys are working on, it helps you reduce the anxiety because you don't personalize it as much. Ooh, I like that. It's such an interesting concept because we've had this sort of renaissance in the last few years about not only accepting failure, but learning from it. And I love this idea of you really putting a term to it of the lab. And so I think that's just a terrific way of thinking about it. Oh, thank you. I appreciate that. I think we all have to sort of use examples of situations like we have to study things, right? Like you can study yourself, you can study other people and you can really apply curiosity to everything and that helps reduce anxiety. Well, now let's talk about another issue that, it's not just founders of startups, everybody is feeling, I think right now, is this idea of overload. You know, of course, as you know, you know, following enough founders and startups that, you know, overload can lead to burnout, can lead to anxiety. So when you're coaching, you know, startup founders or startup leaders, what do you use in your coaching work that's been, maybe can be helpful to the rest of us to maybe reduce overload or at least be able to work through it? Yeah. So first of all, I appreciate that the two of you are already doing this because the first step is to normalize it, is to realize, hey, this is normal. This is common. Other founders and entrepreneurs feel this way. And then to your point, other people, both now because of what we're coming out of, but also in general, our busy lives and our pressured lives, we are feeling overwhelmed, we're feeling anxiety because of it. And then you've got to find some tools. So usually there are rules. It's very helpful to, I tell the people I work with, the clients I coach, to set an alarm to make sure they get enough sleep. So that means don't set up a wake up, a time to wake up alarm, set a time to go to bed alarm. And that helps you know it's time to go to bed and make sure that you're doing the nourishing things you need to do to get enough sleep. So self-care is super important, getting enough sleep, getting fitness, eating well, that helps balance your equilibrium. And then a psychological tool I like to give everybody is to play a highlight reel, to write down your successes, the things that bring you confidence, the things that bring you joy, to write them down and have them ready for you so that you can look at them every morning as a ritual and certainly in times when you're feeling overwhelmed, stressed, anxious, that you can pull out these things and remember there's another side of yourself that helps you activate that other side. I love that idea of the highlight reel, which brings me to where does the rap reel come into play? Well, if you want to know about anxiety, you can think about me stepping up onto a stage in front of like a hundred people to do my very first, very first and only freestyle hip hop rap performance with my squad. By the way, that was March 10th, 2020. So does that ring a bell right before we shut down? If you do some of this right now, we will double your fee for this podcast. Which by the way, everybody is nothing. But I will do it acapella rap if you want to because I then went on to create the only rap video, the only rap music that is about executive coaching. So it goes something like this. You're coming in hot with rap charisma, it's your executive coach, and my name is Alyssa, here to help turn you from a startup founder to a CEO. How does that sound? That's my little snippet for you today. That's the best rap I've heard today. Everybody who watches my rap music video available on my YouTube channel says the same thing. They say, you're so brave. By the way, if anybody ever sings in front of you, the worst thing you can say is, that was so brave. Exactly, nobody has added, and so talented. No, that's all right, I'm fine. You should do this for a living. Yeah, exactly, no, said nobody ever. But actually, I want to say something about this because it's actually really important to me. I took this class, this crazy eight-week class to do hip hop, and I was in the middle of it, and I was like, I'm going to do hip hop. I was like, I'm going to do hip hop. I was like, I'm going to do hip hop. I was like, I'm going to do hip hop. I was like, I'm going to do hip hop. I was like, I'm going to do hip hop. I was like, I'm going to do hip hop. I was like, I'm going to do hip hop. I was like, I'm going to do hip hop. I was like, I'm going to do hip hop. I was like, I'm going to do hip hop. I was like, I'm going to do hip hop. because it's actually really important to me. I took this class, this crazy eight week class to do hip hop, freestyle, improv rap because I wanted to get out of my comfort zone. Because I wanted to do something that was gonna help me like be anxious and be, well I won't even say anxious, nervous, to get some nerves, to unlock my creativity. And let me tell you something, the girl who stepped into that class that day, okay, being like, I can't do this, to the person who stepped onto that stage on March 10th and then went on to record my own rap music video and distribute it on social and whatnot, you know, it changed something in me. So I just wanna say that you guys are writing about anxiety and that's really important and don't mistake anxiety, which is something we have to really take seriously, from nerves and butterflies, which we have to take on when we get out of our comfort zone. And if you want to self-express and if you want to get out of your comfort zone and if you want to improve, you have to put yourself in the line of fire and put little stressors in your life to do it, but you have to have the underpinning of safety inside of yourself and sort of, I know I'm going to be okay inside of myself in order to give yourself the comfort and strength and confidence to step out of your comfort zone. Well, and you know what I love about this, and all kidding aside, the fact that you did that is a bit of a de-stressor for you. I mean, it's anxious in doing it and yet not taking yourself seriously. You know, and having some fun with it and taking that break away from all the pressures of your business and your staff. You know, one of the things that we talk about a lot that causes anxiety is the negative internal voice. I know you've done a lot of talking about that. We've written on the perfectionism in our book, Anxiety at Work, and the need for managers to look at environments in a positive way. One of the key pieces of advice you offer is forgive yourself. Such a great take on how to use your internal voice. Why is that so important to practice forgiveness for individuals and leaders? Oh, yes. Well, I think self-forgiveness is the most important thing because who is your worst critic? For most successful people, it's yourself. So what that means is you're kind of beating yourself up, you have a constant negative talk track in your head. That's normal for many, many people. And so the only way to really resolve that and handle that is just to, as our mentor Marshall Goldsmith says, ah, right, just forgive yourself, let it go. But in all seriousness, you have to be able to turn the compassion that you would have towards your best friend, towards yourself. And in the workplace, as you said, quite rightly, when people are locked up in fear, so what happens is that people get locked up in their own internal critics, their own internal negative voices, and then they will explode at work, be overly stressed at work, feel overwhelmed, and then little things bother them. And that means you can't have, you know, if you're sort of upset with yourself and then someone comes and says something to you that's upsetting or treats you in a certain way, you don't like it and you might overreact, not because the person was doing anything so egregious, but because you misinterpreted because you were tired or overwhelmed, or you misinterpreted or took it the wrong way, or got overly critical of this person as a result of being overly critical of yourself. So on the one hand, it is calming and soothing to do self-forgiveness. It's a good thing to do. And also, like it's just from a work tactic perspective, it's like a very good thing to do because it's going to help you react more calmly when difficult things at work happen. Yeah, I love that idea of be able to respond more calmly, more rationally. So Alyssa, where can we find more about your work? If people want to find more about what you're doing, where do they go? Come to alyssacohn.com, come to my YouTube channel, oh, I spelled it right, A-L-I-S-S-A-C-O-H-N.com, my YouTube channel to check out the rap music video, and you can follow me on LinkedIn, all the socials really, just A-L-I-S-A-C-O-H-N. We want to take just a break right here. I love you as a coach that you are a guide and we love our sponsor Lifeguides. I think everybody, whether they're entrepreneurs or they're business people, you need a guide and Lifeguides is our sponsor. It's a peer-to-peer community that helps people navigate through their day-to-day stressors by providing a place of empathy, listening, wisdom, and support with a guide, a personal guide that's walked in your shoes, experiencing the same challenges and life experiences as you have. And for our listeners, we've got an incredible offer. If you want to show your team that you care and that you love them, all you got to do is go to lifeguides.com forward slash schedule a demo. And at the checkout, all you have to do is put in healthy 2021 in that free text box and you get the first two months free. So if you're looking for a great guide in developing your entrepreneurship, it's Alyssa Cohen. If you need a life guide through life, it's lifeguides.com. Awesome. Hey, I want to jump into one more thing, Alyssa, and this is, as I've read about your work. I love how vulnerable you were about your own anxiety at the beginning of your coaching career. You've been really vulnerable talking about your hip hop and other things today. But so again, despite your anxiety, you became the top coach in the world for startups. So that's pretty impressive. As we talk with people with anxiety, that they say, look, I love my rut. I love being comfortable. But you talk about that, you know, the growth opportunities are anxiety inducing. So what methods or tactics have helped you work through periods of your, maybe aona anxiety or self doubt, but you still wanted to grow? What have you used? Yeah, Adrian, I think it is so important for us all to, as I said before, normalize what's going on and to recognize that like, hey, it takes work and we all are dealing with our own things. So I am really comfortable being open about my own issues and suffering from at various times, anxiety and depression. And actually I saw a therapist and I thought that was really helpful. My therapist was actually kind of like a coach as I called her a bossy therapist. And so at one point, I just would have, especially when I was younger, much less now, I think, because I've really worked on them. But when I was younger, I had a lot of mood swings. So I would not say I had like a little massive depression, but I had mood swings, let's put it that way. And I was really in the middle of these mood swings and my therapist said, listen, you need to go look into medication or start a very rigorous physical activity program. And otherwise, I don't want to see you again. I was like, oh, okay. So I was pretty out of shape, but I dragged myself to the gym because she kind of forced me to do it. I didn't see myself on medication for the rest of my life. So that's when I began my actually incredible journey with fitness by first starting with procrastinating for three hours to go to the gym and then procrastinating only one hour to go to the gym and then finding tools to get to the gym and use intense, you know, I'd sort of would work out three days a week and then I began to increase my workouts and as you may know I now do a pretty intense weightlifting set of activities including on my on my Facebook page I do kettle bell quarantines every weekend during the pandemic and sort of showcasing, you know, what I like to do for my fitness But the reason I talk about fitness is because it really led me I should say I won't say out of anxiety depression because I think I still at times just suffer from feeling high-strung But it's my it's calmed me. It's soothed me It's sort of helped me stay on an even keel and I think physical activity is just super important The other thing I would say is self-talk is that I learned myself to have perspective, to apply self-compassion to myself, to recognize that everything is a process, and to find my own learning lab inside of what I was doing. So it takes a long time, I think these things, especially if you're sort of self-guiding, it takes some time, but I think it's helpful to pull tools from all sorts of modalities and also all sorts of people. You know, it's interesting, we couldn't agree more. That's what works for you. You know, you've got to find out what works for you, doesn't it? Because even though the kettle bells work for you, may not work for everybody, going through that process, going through that lab and figuring it out is all part of the journey. What he's saying is he doesn't want to do kettle bells. I'm not doing that. Testa's like, no, that would not work for me. Testa, you come visit me in New Jersey, I will show you kettlebells in a gentle, self-compassionate way. And I will be very forgiving of myself that I won't do it. You know, it's interesting, you know, everybody's been through so much this year, you know, lockdowns, restrictions, it's been really hard on people's mental health. You said that as hard as that was, going back to work, getting back to whatever normal looks like might be even harder. Why are we in for such a challenge here? And what should leaders be aware of as people are coming back to the office? Yeah, I think that people, many people that we know, many people who serve are white collar workers, found a rhythm and a cocoon and much to like about the nesting of the pandemic, much to like the family time they got, the lack of competing commitments, lack of feeling over-scheduled, even this experience of kind of knowing the friends who are important to them. Many of us, I myself took up, I did this rap about executive coaching, I took up piano lessons. My beau and I had barbecues regularly on our deck. So, I sort of, I had my own pandemic hobbies. Many people found pandemic hobbies. And I think going back to the office and maybe re-entering real life, there's something really lovely about that. There's something euphoric around that, knowing that we've gotten through this period. But I think there was also something which brings back, life had been on pause. And now if I was, when I, if I was ambivalent about something, I gave myself the excuse, oh, it was the pandemic. Well, not pandemic anymore. Now you've got to face these issues. And that Forbes article I wrote about facing building your network when you've let it go for a year, facing what to do about your career when you sort of had just decided to play it safe the way it was this year. You know, I think that's also true for relationships. It's certainly true for FOMO now. You know, fear of missing out like it when there wasn't anything going on, you didn't have to experience FOMO. And now, making those trade offs and choices is going to, I think, once again, awaken, actually the anxiety of having to choose and having to reconfront things. It's such a powerful thought is, and I've noticed it too, and you take it off, and all of a sudden, people are going back into the office. For some people, that's going to create anxiety, all these little things that we hadn't thought. We thought, oh, I'll be wonderful when I can take it off, but we are losing our comfort, our security blankets in a way. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's true. Well, this has been so great, Alyssa. We'd love you to maybe just to summarize for people who have been listening today, a couple of points you would like people to take away from our conversation. What would you kind of say to those who either may be suffering from anxiety at work or leading teams where they're trying to bring down anxiety level? Yeah, well, first I would say if you're leading a team where you're trying to bring down anxiety levels, I think it's very important to think about how do you build belonging and community inside of your team, because people will support each other. And I used to think the most important thing at work was setting clear goals and having accountability around them. And I now realize that everything has to be nested inside of psychological safety, and that's about safety, because people who are anxious and overwhelmed are not doing their best work. So be aware of that as a leader, and work to be an open space, an open channel for dialogue about that. If you are a person who might be like me, slightly high strung or dealing with anxiety, depression, and certainly if you're a founder, you need to really recognize you need to take care of yourself by sleep and exercise and nutrition and even in taking breaks and those kinds of things. You need to find tools like finding like a highlight reel, like putting yourself in the balcony and taking perspective, like being curious about what's going on. Use those tools to step away from the situation and depersonalize it so that you can deal with it without it sort of, without it just upsetting you so much and taking you off an even keel. Because for all of us, the best decision making comes from a rational point of view and a calm point of view. You know, Alyssa, just love your vulnerability, love your energy, love your humor. This has really been a delight to spend some time with you and I know it has been for our listeners as well. So again, just tell us where we can find more about you and where people can find your books and your good work and a little plug for your October book. Oh, well thank you very much. So my book in October is called From Startup to Grownup. It's my first book so I'm very excited about it and you can pre-order it on Amazon. It is about the journey of going from founder to CEO. So it's the idea of going from someone who is building a product to someone who is building a business. It's divided into three sections, managing yourself, managing others and managing the business and actually everybody who is in the world of business can really benefit from it. So I'm excited about that and we do, as I said, I do deal with anxiety in that book because it's such an important topic and everyone can find me at AlyssaCone.com and please reach out to say hi on LinkedIn, Facebook, Insta, whatever your socials are. Well, who could be more delightful than Alyssa Cone? I mean great information, great energy and a rap session, you know, come on. We've never had that happen before and great takeaways. You know, it's so funny. We always think of entrepreneurs being under a lot of stress that she put a number to it, 30% more likely to suffer from anxiety and stress. That was fascinating, wasn't it? It really was. And the fact that she's working with a lot of these startup CEOs is very powerful. What she tells them is, look, first off, you're gonna fail. And every startup founder has, she says, think of it as a learning lab. Because they're obsessed with self-improvement anyway, then what are you learning here? And teaching that to your people can be tremendously anxiety reducing. I love the way she puts the roadmap together for me. You're gonna have ups, you're gonna have downs, and to your point, in the lab, get curious about what happened. You know, depersonalize it. I thought that was such a great tip, because you do, you take it so personally as an entrepreneur, as business people, as everybody does. Failure, you really take it personally. If you depersonalize it and say, okay, what did I learn? Let's be curious. Let's look at it as a lab experiment. You can get over those emotions faster. Oh, absolutely. I do like that idea too, because one of the things she talked about too, and I thought you would really spark to this, is this idea of a highlight reel. Yeah, absolutely. Maybe we kept a little folder in the old days where we'd have things that, you know, the boss said, good job on it's posted, we'd put it in there. But be ready to see yourself in that way that think back on those successes. And even she was saying, she was talking about a rap about breaking out of her comfort zone that we have to remember anxiety is not nerves. This is not just something, you know, but people with anxiety can't have nerves. It can actually exacerbate things. So create safety within yourself. And part of that is this highlight reel idea. Yeah. Yeah. Butterflies are good, anxiety bad. I love that she made the distinction. She also talked about normalizing it. This is a normal thing. Don't feel like this is just you. And then the tools, setting an alarm for when you should get to sleep, and then play that highlight reel from time to time. You know, give yourself that, as our friend John Baldoni would say, give yourself a little grace, give yourself a break. You know, you've been great, you can be great again. Yeah, exactly. So, you know, I thought some really good takeaways on coming back into the workplace and really thinking about this, that people have created a rhythm. It's been 14, 15, 16 months, it's been a long time that they've, and they found benefits in working this way. I've had more family time, I've had more focus. So that, be aware of those stressors and anxiety that people will feel coming back into the workplace. Yeah, when she used the word cocoon, that really resonated with me. I go, yeah, you know, like you said, behind the mask, I've picked up some hobbies, I play the piano now, I can have dinner with my family, and that'll all be disruptive, and that'll all be cause for anxiety as well. A great take on it, things I hadn't thought of before. And then find your way to deal with anxiety. For her, it's kettlebells. Won't be for me, as you very acutely and accurately pointed out. What is it that works for you? Is it getting that sleep? Is it eating differently? Is it time with friends? And I love that she found her lane that worked for her and encouraged people to find their own. Yeah, which is what we encourage everyone to do, is find your lane, whether you're leading people and trying to create a psychologically safe culture like Alyssa talked about, or you're trying to take care of yourself and finding the path that works for you. Take time, normalize this, and let's just keep the conversation going, right, Chess? Yeah, and you talk about taking care of yourself, you know, we talk about Life Guides, that are a great sponsor, you know, this peer-to-peer community that gives you a personal guide to walk you through those stressors, you know, in a place of empathy, listening, and wisdom. Somebody that's gone through what you've gone through, right, the same challenges, the same life experiences, and their offer to our listeners is fabulous. If you wanna show your team you care and offer up Lifeguides and their services, just go to lifeguides.com forward slash schedule a demo. And in the checkout box, all you gotta do is put in healthy 2021 and you get the first two months free. Now, all this information will be in the show notes. So don't worry, you can't take a screenshot on a podcast. It'll all be there for you. We love Lifeguides. They're making a difference for so many people. Their goal is to impact a billion people worldwide. That's a noble goal. And extremely affordable, very easy to implement, and it really is an effective way to show your people that you care. So special thanks for all of you who've listened to our producer Brent Klein, to Christy Lawrence who finds amazing guests for us. And if you'd like to learn more, check out our new book, Anxiety at Work. And if you like the podcast, please share it. You know, we'd like you to download it. That's one of the indicators that you've got a good podcast. Be curious, as Alyssa said, be curious about our podcast. Download it, share it with friends. And we've got a wonderful online community, wethrivetogether.global. Again, that'll be in the show notes where we're creating a safe place to talk about anxiety and mental health at work. Again, thank you for your time. Look forward to seeing you back here again. Adrian, another great podcast, another great guest. Who's luckier than you and me? Nobody. That's exactly right. So have a great week, everybody. We'll talk soon. You bet. Take care and be well. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you..