In this leading edge episode, Emma Maslen, CEO & Founder of inspir’em ltd, shares her own rags to riches story and how she helps others create a personal board to help get them the wisdom and advice they need to succeed now and in the face of tomorrow’s challenges as well.
You will discover:
– Why you should start building a personal board of advisors
– Why as a founder you should avoid a board of directors until you have to have one
– How to approach someone who you want on your personal board
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello Hello and welcome. Welcome once again to the secrets of the high demand coach and I am here with yet another high demand coach and that is Emma Maslen. She’s the founder of inspir‘em and has 20 plus years of experience in the technology sector, working for household names such as Sun Microsystems, BMC, software, and SAP concur and Ping Identity. Now, Emma has extensive technology and go to market experience in multiple geographies. And but She’s now an angel investor, Ned startup strategist, coach and consultant and has a brand new book that I’m really excited to talk about. So we could go on and on about all of the things that you’ve done, because there’s so many of them, but I’d rather just hear it from you. So tell us about Welcome to the show. Tell us a little bit about your story and how you ended up where you are today. Why why you made the leap to start Inspir’em.
Emma Maslen
Yeah, absolutely. So thanks very much for having me. Delighted to be here. So. So my story is a really interesting one, a bit of a rags to riches type story, really. So I came from a white working class background. My father always worked in factories. My mother was a cook, who worked in an old people’s home. And I studied really well at school. But actually, what I found was when I thought about going to university, the reality was is I wasn’t going to be able to fund that. And I wanted to go and study something that you could really study, like, become a doctor. And I just thought I just couldn’t do both of those things. So I decided to just quit during my A levels. I went and got myself a job. And then I just started working. By the time I was 19, I was working for a company called Ingram micro, which is now one of the biggest tech distributors in the world. And I was working for a bunch of different people there. And somebody spotted me and said, Hey, I think you could do some really great stuff. Why don’t you come and work for another company. So this guy sort of sponsored me and took me off to work for an IBM reseller. And before I knew it, I was doing multimillion dollar deals with people like UBS and Credit Suisse at 19. And my story really was actually always a bit of a people person. And it seemed that that worked really well in the sales world. So I fell into sales. I worked for an IBM reseller, I worked with Sun Microsystems, I took myself out to the US lived in Boston for a while. And then I went to work for other big tech companies running different businesses, as both the salesperson and also as a leader. Then, after I’d been in tech sales for quite a while, I thought I want to do something different, I’d love to run a company, and SAP gave me the opportunity to go and do that. So I went to work for SAP about sort of six, seven years ago. And when I did that, I also was tapped up to do some angel investing. And I suppose like most people that are tapped up about angel investing, we think why should we don’t know anything about this. But I was really curious about a company that I’d met that had got sap to resell their product. And so I started angel investing, working with founders and entrepreneurs, and became a member of Angel Academy, which is a big Angel Network. So it sort of got this experience of lots of sales leadership, I was now in a world of angel investing and sort of advisory tight work with some founders and entrepreneurs. And I really enjoyed that. I loved the speed at which smaller companies could move, I’d come from SAP, so obviously difficult to do big transformations. And then were just before COVID, I decided that that’s what I wanted to do. So I founded the company called inspire him. We started doing some coaching, and we do revenue coaching, sales training for lots of really big companies, medium sized companies and small founder based companies. And that was four years ago, and it sort of take me into some very different places. So that’s a little bit about my story and sort of how I’ve got here.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, fascinating. Well, what then would you say, is some of the most important work that you and your firm are doing today?
Emma Maslen
So I would say from a coaching perspective, I would say that the thing that always really attracted me into coaching, the reason why I went and studied coaching was, I was fortunate enough at SAP to be given a coach. And when you’re making big transformational decisions, big business decisions that affect a lot of people business direction, I think at first, I probably didn’t appreciate it. But actually, over time, I realized that having a coach was a real luxury to have, that you had time to think that you got really dedicated time to go through some of these really complex problems, and then solve some of those issues. In a very trusted environment. As you become a leader, you go from not being able to sort of talk to your peers about stuff because obviously because of transformations that you’re gonna make so so I would say that that’s, that’s one of the most important things that we do as a firm is we help individuals from a coaching perspective, but we also help revenue leaders as well make really big decisions about the transformation in a sort of safe environment and then help them move everybody in that direction.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah. Fascinating. Now, one of the things that I saw as I was doing some research for the episode was your book look and tell us a little bit, it’s called the personal board of you fascinating concept. Tell us a little bit. How did that come into play?
Emma Maslen
Yeah. So I say in in 2009, I was working for Sun Microsystems, and I was just about to beat, the company was just about to be taken over by Oracle. And I was considering a move, because I just thought I wasn’t sure that the two cultures were the same. And I thought it’s probably time to move on, I’d been at Sun for a while. And I had an opportunity to go and work for BMC. And I got given a job offer. Once it became public, that I was going to go and work for BMC, I found a lot of people were giving me advice about if I should go or not go. And in fact, actually a lot of advice was, we don’t think that’s a good idea, you should stay where you are. And the more I thought about this advice that I was given, the advice was based on people’s own experiences, in a lot of cases, some people knew some of the people I was going to work for, they had some strong opinions. But also they were trying to manipulate the position as well, because they wanted me to stay in the company. So I started to think about who are the advisors that I take advice from? And I realized that actually, the advice I was listening to was advice I just organically connected. So I started to think, well, what if I went and sought different advice? What if I diversified the advisors that I had, essentially, around my, my personal board, you know, you think about a boardroom in any corporation, and started to think, Okay, so who do I get to diversify the board, get some different opinions, not be manipulated. But then also, maybe even try and find some people that can accelerate my skills, or do something different learn about a new market. So they started to sort of come up with this idea of being more strategic about advice. Many people have had a very similar thought, as well in the past. And it’s just been really useful for me. I’ve spoken about it a lot in a lot of different forums. But also, when I’ve taken over new markets, I’ve easily been able to seek out people who could help me learn faster, and then get to my goals faster. So that was sort of where it came from. It was my own journey. But then over time, as I’ve spoken about it more, I’ve become a little bit more, I suppose programmatic about the types of advice that I’m taking. And what suggests that
Scott Ritzheimer
it’s so so important, and I see this happen with a lot of the founders I work with as well is, when you go and start a company, it’s a pretty mad thing to do. You know, it’s not necessarily the smartest idea, it’s not the highest likelihood of success. And so a lot of founders are surrounded by a lot of non founders, who, who really just don’t understand the process. They mean, well, the some of them, some of them, there’s the you know, their own agenda, meat, family and things like that. But they’ve got a lot of people who have a lot of opinions. But is there is there a whole lot of wisdom in that. And a lot of folks find that lacking. So as you’re looking at how to build one of these boards. Where do you start?
Emma Maslen
Yeah, well, ya know, if you think about it from a founders perspective, usually founders become founders, because they’re passionate about subject matter. They’re usually not people that have run a business before. So they’re going to need some advice on that, they’re probably going to need some advice on how to take investment, because that will be new territory, tea. And then you thinking, well, actually, we need to expand a network out and actually find people that are going to give us investment, plus their navigate all of the things that they’ve got to navigate marketing, sales, customer success, all the other stuff that sort of goes on as well. So the advice I usually give people is, you know, just make a little bit of a view to start with making an assessment of where are you? Who are you taking advice from today? Who do you regularly talk to, to take advice from, then think about where you’re heading. So if you’re a founder that’s just started a business, you know, project yourself out over three years? Well, the big milestones that you’re going to need to do over the next three years, you’re probably going to need to get some tax efficiency to raise funds, you’ll need to raise funds, you’ll need to speak to investors, get some law, legal help, etc. Projects yourself out and then think, Okay, so who on my list can help me with those things? And what am I missing? And then you need to start a process of filling the gaps and start thinking, Okay, who am I missing from my board? What sorts of skills am I missing? And then you can start to almost, you know, accelerate your board, accelerate the skills that you’re getting and the advice that you’re getting from those different people. So I’d say that that’s really the place to begin.
Scott Ritzheimer
And is this like a literal board that meets together on regular occasions? Or is this a group of people that you know, you just know, and trust? What what is, is there a structure that works better than others?
Emma Maslen
Yeah, so I would say the personal board concept is in your head, you might have a couple of members that know each other, maybe you meet together with them if there’s something strategic that you’re working on, maybe a new role or founding a new business, those sorts of things, but mostly it’s going to be in your head. But that said, I think for founders and entrepreneurs as well. You could have a personal board have advisors and almost one at like a board meeting, get some people together, I just want to just add that those people should be not paid. Because the whole idea of having a personal board, apart from a coach who is paid specifically to be a coach, these people shouldn’t have anything in it for them. Right. So they should be, you know, there’s no manipulation, they’re agnostic in terms of decision, you know, they’re very much in it for you. So you could get them together, particularly if you’re an entrepreneur, and use them almost as your board until you have to take investment and properly sorted the board out.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. And that’s such an important point. Because for the very reason we talked about earlier, some founders recognize I could use some people to help me along the way, right, I could use some advice, I could use a board. And I’ve actually seen them go out and make like a formal board before they had to. And it’s, it’s rarely a glorious thing, right? It’s, it doesn’t typically end well for the exact reason that you mentioned here is there’s something in it for them. And so the founder who started this thing, because they’re passionate about it, they want the freedom and autonomy of pursuing it their own way. They don’t entirely know what it looks like yet, but they’re gonna figure it out. Now they’re having to answer to people, you know, on a regular basis. And it’s like, it’s almost like you become an employee again. Have you seen that at all?
Emma Maslen
Yeah, I have I did. I did a podcast a little while ago about this with a legal firm, because quite often, like you say, people form boards way too early. And let alone the fact that you have to answer to people that the legalities of it and the governance that goes around having a proper board. You know, they’re also quite dull meetings as well. So you know, there’s, there’s, there’s little executive sort of execution that goes on in those meetings. So actually, founders, generally find them quite restrictive. So I think, are almost having this halfway house in the beginning, where you have people that are helping you, but you haven’t got to formalize that. And you shouldn’t be really doing that until you sort of series A anyway, the other thing that I find as well, that happens when you get into conversations about these sort of advisors is I see so many founders giving away equity to these advisors, and without any job description, or any sort of terms around what they’re expected to deliver. And then what ends up happening is obviously, as the founder goes on their journey, and they realize that they’re having to give away equity, but other things, they really regret giving away equity early on to people who maybe helped them a little bit, but didn’t actually move the needle for them.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah, it’s so true. And then he actually brings me to the next question I wanted to ask, which was, what what did they get out of it? What what’s the what’s the pitch, if you will to say, Hey, will you help me in this way? How do you maybe even if we take it a step back, how would you approach someone that you want it to be on your personal board?
Emma Maslen
Yeah, absolutely. So just take it from the the almost founder, entrepreneur type perspective, or in any individual that wants to get somebody to sort of help them with a bit of mentoring, coaching advice, whatever it would be. Couple of things that I would suggest is, first of all, I’d be really clear why you’ve why you’ve sought that person out. So what is it about their experience that you’re interested in? People love to hear about themselves, they love to hear about their achievements, and that that’s valued valuable to somebody? Okay, so the first thing is, is I would don’t start with, I want to do this, I’d like some advice. Start with, actually, you’re amazing. And this is why I think you’re amazing. And then I would provide a very short synopsis of what you need and make it a small ask, particularly if you’re asking people really senior, and they’re strangers, make it something that they find quite difficult to say no to. So I’ll give you an example of this. I’ve done a lot of angel investing, but a lot of angel investing I’ve done has been in sort of London and big cities. I recently moved down to Cornwall, in in England, and I thought I need to get involved with an angel network that’s in the area. So I sent a really short message to somebody on LinkedIn, I found was a speaker of a Cornish event and said, I’m an angel investor, I’ve seen that you’re an angel investor, you’ve done some amazing things. I’d love to get involved in network could you signpost me, but I see didn’t have to meet with me, could he just signpost me to some help? Lo and behold, he offered me a meeting. And then the rest is sort of history are now involved in that network, right? So if you get a small ask, that’s fine. On the flip side of it, why don’t people do it? Or as I mentioned, first of all, people like to talk about their achievements, right? They like to discuss all those sorts of things. So that’s the first reason why they do it is they do it for some level of ego. But ultimately, as well, when we help people we do get a rush of oxytocin. And so when we get asked, you get a rush rush of oxytocin. When you then deliver, you get a rush as well, and the more that we can demonstrate to people that their advice was useful to us the more they’ll come back for more, it gets quite addictive, right? So. And just in that my one piece of advice on that as well would be that make sure once you do take a piece of advice, give them the feedback, let them know what happened. There’s nothing worse than giving people advice, and helping people. And then you don’t hear how it went. Was it useful or not? It’s disappointing if you’re, if you’re being asked.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, it’s so true. I just had someone in that exact situation, tell me this massive success story. And it would have been very easy for her to have not done that, right. But the way it shaped my day and just totally transformed. What I my perceived impact in her life in her career was awesome. So
Emma Maslen
I need to be made just get pin as well. And when you just told that story back, your face lit up. And you were very happy about that. Right?
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, it was the call right before that. So it’s fresh in my mind. And yeah, it’s so cool. And I come from a, you know, a bit of the marketing world. And one of the things we talked about talk about is, you know, not being the hero and the way you communicate and the value of being a guide. And that translates into our personal life as well. And those opportunities, I’ve had to not try and play the center role, but to support someone else in their journey, have time and time and time again, been the most rewarding parts of my life.
Emma Maslen
Yeah, absolutely. And actually, that’s what I did in my book, because the more people I spoke to about this idea, I would get people come up to me at conferences and events and say, Hey, I used that idea. And the next time I saw them, they tell me the result of that. So what I did in the book was actually I collected people’s stories and said, Son, would you be okay, if I shared your story about maybe how you made some connections to the founder, or how you formed your first board, or how you took investment, or how you got a promotion? Because actually, they’re the things that that really give you the kick and also make people see that these things are possible for anybody so. So we’ve tried to include as many stories as possible in the book.
Scott Ritzheimer
Not awesome. That’s fantastic. So I’ve got a question for you. I like to ask this of all my guests, and it’s this what’s the biggest secret you wish wasn’t a secret at all? Or what’s the one thing that you wish everybody listening or watching today knew?
Emma Maslen
Yeah, absolutely. I think the biggest thing for me is about there is a real need to build your network, you know. And I think part of the challenge with networking, is that people think that, particularly in Europe, I know for sure, networking involves warm wine and standing in a room of strangers. Right? That’s not what networking is. And we need to almost get over the forum of how we network and think about making connections to people. Because early in your career, those seeds that you sow, are the ones that use them really reap the rewards of when you’re sort of later in life. And it applies to everybody, founders who are trying to set a vision and hire people, leaders who are trying to recruit people as they get bigger and bigger teams, or even individuals that need to learn something new go to a different place, maybe also people who are in portfolio careers who want to move from executive to portfolio. We all need the network. I think one of the things that as part of that, that I wish I’d have known was back in the day when I first started in tech, I thought that life was meritocracy. I thought that if I put my head down, and I worked really hard, people would spot me, and then they’d give me some reward for it. The world is a noisy place. So unless you tell people what you want, and you have the network, and you’re telling people what you’re looking for, how can they think of you? So I think it’s so important to just remember that making the connections really important, which is networking, but without the wine. And then the second thing I would say is tell people what you’re looking for, so they can think of you.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah, that’s so good. So we’ve talked a lot about the some of the advice you’ve given and how you’ve helped others. I’d love for us to kind of turn things around a little bit. So take off your your coach, consultant advisor hat for a moment, put on your CEO hat and talk to us what’s the next stage of growth look like for you in your business? And what challenges will you have to overcome to get there?
Emma Maslen
Yes, so I think the next stage of growth for us actually is we get asked by so many people, to be connected to other people. And I think we’ve really resisted it until this point to start creating an Inspir’em community, just because there’s a lot of commitment that’s involved in that. But what I found is so many of our customers are now connected to other customers, and they’re really reaping the rewards of that, you know, I see that, you know, we will see that inspiring community of sorts by early next year for sure. And you know, we’ll do that just because it just helps all of the people that are customers of ours grow. They grow their networks, they get better jobs, or they make new connections as founders to grow their revenue. It’s just, it’s something that we feel very passionate about, and I think it will be something that you’ll see very soon.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah. Am I’ve got one final question for you here before I’ll let you go. And there’s actually two parts of it. So maybe it’s two questions. But first one is how can folks get a copy of your book? And where can they find more out about the work you do?
Emma Maslen
Yeah, absolutely. So if you go to emmamaslen.com, you can get a copy of the book. So we are happy to provide books that are interested in looking at material. We’ve also got a stack of blogs on there as well. And if you go to inspirem.coach, that’s actually about the business itself, right? So it’s about revenue based coaching. It’s about co founder coaching and sales leader coaching. We’ve got a stack of blogs on there that are all free, all informational about how you can get to revenue faster. Yeah, so you can go to either of those places, or just go to Amazon and find us on Amazon.
Scott Ritzheimer
That’s fantastic. Well, Emma, thank you so much for being on the show. It’s just an absolute pleasure having you here. Congratulations on the book. I hope to see more people get it in the hands because I know the power of having a great board of advisors around you. So thank you so much for doing that. Thank you for being here. And for those of you watching or listening today, you know that your time and attention in the world to us I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I know I did. And I cannot wait to see you next time. Take care.
Contact Emma Maslen
Emma Maslen has 20 plus years’ experience in the technology sector working for household names such as Sun Microsystems, BMC Software, and SAP Concur & Ping Identity. Emma has extensive technology go-to-market experience in multiple geographies. Now an angel investor, NED, start-up strategist, coach and consultant – Emma uses her industry experience and skills to help companies and individuals achieve their potential. Emma is IOD certified, part of the Henley School for Coaching Alumni and also Hogan Certified.
Want to learn more about Emma Maslen’s work at inspir’em Ltd? Check out her website at https://www.inspirem.coach/. You can also get a copy of her book and find a wealth of resources at https://www.emmamaslen.com
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