I work with people at the top of small to medium businesses and startups. They have about 5-50 employees and $1-5mm of annual revenue and/or funding. They're hitting a period of growth, feeling the wheels starting to come off the bus, and want to get ahead of it.

Maybe you're adding more people to the team and need to get better at management—fast. Maybe you know the company needs something more from you and are daunted. Maybe you're drowning in work and their family and friends can't take it anymore. Or maybe you just want a place you can let your guard down and think out loud.

Some founders also come to me when they're thinking of quitting their baby—their former dream job!—and want to make an exit plan. Spoiler alert: all of these folks changed their relationship to their work in coaching and none of them have quit yet. Or they're having conflict with a cofounder or key employee, or they just got feedback that shook them and they don't know what to do about it.

I also work with entrepreneurs who are between companies and want to debrief their intense journey and set up for a strong next chapter.

A lot of my clients have (or suspect) ADHD, many are from the LGBTQ+ community, and they come from a wide range of ages and backgrounds.

Coaching is not advice, training, or mentorship. It's a combination of reflection, perspective, accountability, and a sounding board, with a firm grounding in the big picture. Coaching is not about what the coach sees, it's about helping you see more clearly.

Every week is different, but coaching generally looks like a combination of these modes:

1. Clarity when things are muddy. We look at the situation from many different perspectives until you can put into words what you want or what's bugging you. Christina says "one of the most valuable things about coaching is getting perspective and clarity outside your day to day."
2. Execution when you know what you want, but are spinning your wheels. We'll define what "done" looks like and make a concrete plan to move forward on even the squishiest of goals, and experiment and iterate until you get results. People report a surge of excitement when their goals become tangible. Aliya said "This is great, I really like having a plan! Makes me more excited about doing these goals. It's helpful to have it be so actionable."
3. Being real and feeling less alone. Your friends and family love you, but they don't really understand. And you can't vent or discuss certain things with direct reports. And you have to put on a bright shining face for your funders. It can be an incredible relief to have recurring time where you can let your Big Boss guard down for a sec and just be a human person.

I'm in your corner! So I'll recognize your wins and strengths. It also means I'll hold you accountable to doing the hard things that scare you a little, but get you where you want you (and your company) to go.

My approach is woo-free and pragmatic. My background is in physics, psychology, and programming, so I tend to think in systems, experiments, and hypotheses. I use behavioral psychology to be realistic about how brains actually work to help you take action, even on the squishiest of goals. I like reading and have a substantial toolkit of different frameworks and lenses to help you get unstuck faster.

Note that this doesn't mean we won't talk about feelings! Many of us, especially those who identify as the logical, rational types, are used to dismissing them. But feelings are information. They are your brain trying very hard to tell you something. And they guide your behavior—whether you listen to them or not.

It's critical to be able to identify feelings, especially for leaders.

The truth is, ignoring your feelings makes you erratic, unpredictable, and difficult to work with.

This hurts your leadership, your relationships, and your team.

You're busy! No time for program steps you don't need. We'll make every session count with a highly tailored plan.

We start with the main goal or challenge that brought you to coaching and tackle that from the first session. And if it takes you a while to untangle the ball of string, that's fine! We'll also make sure to zoom out and understand how you got here, and how this project connects to what you want to build in the long term.

Often the fastest and deepest learning comes from live examples, so as much as possible, sessions focus on things that are happening for you right now. We'll bounce between that and tracking your long-term trajectory. One client described it feeling like a swimmer in the ocean: "today was a good forcing function to step back from the day to day. It's like I'm swimming hard all the time, so putting my head above water feels good. I put up my head and then I know what direction to swim hard off to."

If you want to check for blind spots, I'll also show you my Five Pillars (article forthcoming). Generally the daily "stuff that comes up" is actually deeply tied to your growth as a leader once you look at it right, so this is a lightweight emergent structure that lets you make progress by going in any order, so it can be responsive to your day to day challenges.

What happens between sessions is up to you. My clients vary a ton in how much reading, tracking, reflecting, etc, they like doing. We design the program that gets you the best results while realistically fitting into the rest of your life.

You could set aside time every week to reflect, set goals, and ask yourself good questions. Most people try but find that the time gets pushed aside to support their teams or other "things that come up." Signing up for coaching is like pre-committing time to your own development—it keeps it at the top of your priority list.

"It really helps to know that I can't slack on me. I used to say 'on Monday I'll spend 30 minutes on this' and then something would come up, so I'd push it to Wednesday. And then push it to Friday. And then the following week. And then the tab would be open on my computer for two months. Because it was about ME, not my reports, it didn't ever feel like a priority. Now I take the time and make it happen before each of our meetings." —Ginell

You could read a book. It's a great wonder of our age that for $20 you can get an expert's knowledge on a topic condensed down into something that takes only a few hours to read. There's tons of great info in books. But the info only matters if you 1) figure out which book to read 2) actually read it and then 3) apply it. In their big busy jobs, my clients report that they don't even get to step 1. Turn to a book when you have a clear, scoped, burning problem big enough that you can justify taking the time to read it.

You could talk to peers. This is really helpful for camaraderie, feeling less alone, and hearing what others are doing. The tradeoff is there's less time to sort out your issues, as you only get the mic 1/N of the time, and your peers aren't seeing patterns across many people and companies. Plus if you're the type of person who likes to be helpful, you may find yourself giving more help than you get.

You could find a mentor. Mentors who have walked your path are invaluable. They can help you spot speed bumps, see around corners, and learn from others' mistakes. They generally do this by sharing their opinions, not helping you figure out yours. A successful pattern for founders is to have a coach plus assorted mentors on critical topics. If you've been meaning to line up mentors for your company, a coach can help you do that.

All of these activities are worth doing and provide value. They are all tools you could bring to bear on your work and growth. It's just a question of your constraints and what sort of support you want in this current chapter.

You're not alone! ADHD is massively overrepresented in entrepreneurs and other creatives and trailblazers. It makes you more likely to start something new, but then makes that hard job even more challenging. Executive function challenges can lead to overwhelm, procrastination, dropping balls, and getting stuck in the busywork while the important work just sits there, month after month, giving you the hairy eyeball.

And if you're diagnosed in adulthood, you've spent decades using anxiety as your only stick to get moving, wondering why this "easy" stuff is so hard for you. That does a number on your relationship with yourself!

So if you're feeling like a duck (seemingly calm, but paddling madly below the surface) and common advice like "just do a little every day" and "have you tried using a planner?" just doesn't seem to work for you, you are not broken! You just need to learn what actually works for YOUR brain through structured experiments.

A lot of my clients have (or suspect) ADHD. We craft experiments and interventions more likely to work for those brains, and they don't burn time and self-regard by trying doomed approaches built for someone else. And like how curb cuts help everyone, wheelchair or no, my accommodations like reminders and thorough notes help all my clients.

I'm a New Yorker somehow living in Los Angeles, so I'm on Pacific time. If you're on the east coast, this means you'll never see me in the mornings, but on the plus side your after-work hours are fair game! I keep a small client roster so I can have good availability for my very busy clients. I don't work on weekends.

I've extensively tinkered with format, duration, and cadence, and like everything about my coaching, I start with good defaults that work for most people and we tailor from there. We meet weekly to start, usually for three to four weeks, an hour at a time. After that, most clients shift to every two weeks, which gives them time to gather data and work on stuff between sessions. Plans with a weekly cadence are also available.

Once you've been a client for a few months and you have gotten some practice at the skill of being coached, you unlock more options, like one-off sessions, a punchcard, and quarterly planning summits.

The next step is to contact me for a first call. It's no fee, no pressure, thorough conversation about your situation. We'll get to know each other and start feeling out if this style of coaching is the right tool for you in your current chapter. If not, I'll do my best to refer one step closer to the right thing.

Coaching is all about fit, and a lot of people are still new to coaching (especially first-time founders) so I have a very robust no-risk refund policy in the first month. And because I believe you should only be in coaching as long as you are getting value from it, I have flexible month-to-month terms after that. It's common for my clients to get results, pause for a bit to focus on other things, and come back as new challenges emerge.