In this inspirational episode, Kate Blake, Owner of Kate Blake, shares how she helps startup founders build the team they need to succeed.
You will discover:
– Who the right hire is for your team
– The 4 things every startup needs
– The 2 types of founders and how to tell which one you are
Episode Transcript
Scott Ritzheimer
Hello, hello and welcome. Welcome once again to the secrets of the high demand coach podcast. And I am here today with Kate Blake, who is a catalyst for powerful human beings ready for breakthroughs. After a decade of experience as an advisor to startup founders, Kate created a program that unleashes human potential, often buried by outdated workplace infrastructures and part business wizard, part energetic businesswoman, part straight talking best friend you didn’t know you needed. She helps you stay aligned as your mission’s power responsibility and business compounds. Consider her Your Guide to unlocking the nuanced agreements you’ve made to perform as you should instead of fighting for who you are. And she is here with us today, Kate, so excited to have you on you had this cool little list. It was almost like a side note on your website, but it just jumped right off the page for me, I think because of the simplicity of it, and that was you said successful startups require four things. They require the right product, the right time to market. You can’t run out of money, and the right team. And one of the things, all of those are true, we’re going to dive into this. But one of the things that I noticed wasn’t on that list was the right founder, and so having done this as many times as you had, and having counseled so many people through it, is there such a thing as the right founder?
Kate Blake
I mean, I think when you look at VCs, you look at investment, you look at like betting on, you know, what’s going to work? You know, most VCs will say that are going to bet on the person, not the product, or not the idea become one of the team. So I guess I would put founder in team. I mean, I think that obviously needs to be a big part. It depends on the kind of founder that you are also, you know, and use if you’re the guy who or girl who wants to start something and get it off the ground and get it in motion, you know, you’re a builder. You like to have your hands in it. That’s very different than somebody who’s going to we usually see somebody else step in to scale it, to move it to, you know, try to become a household name. So I think it depends on what the needs of the organization are, and the skills of starting move that chiming, if they just heard that, what the skills are, what skills of the founder, but also what’s needed by the company, from the company at the time, and the size they’re at and, you know, their stage of development. Yeah, so you mentioned kind of this builder type. What are some of the other types of of successful founders that you’ve come across? I mean, in my mind, I just really like to oversimplify things. I think if we listed like 10 different versions and all, it’s hard to remember. It’s hard to track. I think you know those would be the really two simple ones. I mean, obviously there are many stages an organization goes through, but understanding where exactly you feel lit up, where you feel excited when you the other thing look, most of most founders are way past their skis. You know, they we have this fun little game in Silicon Valley where you’ve got to get a megaphone as big as you can, and only thing you’re allowed to yell is we’re killing it. And the reality is, is that whether you’re in a startup or in a regular business, which, by the way, between the two, I think it’s just the speed to scale, if either one of them, most of the stuff is going on inside is pretty gnarly. It’s pretty messy. It just is how it goes. You know, you’re trying to build something with the best team that you can have. So I think the most important part, because people are going to feel uncomfortable, is getting support, having a bunch of advisors, having the best team you can around you to give you the best advice that you can have, to make the best decisions you can and just really pay attention to how are you experiencing this? Are you past a point where you feel like you really know confidently that you can lean into that uncertainty and really do the best you can? Or is it something that you’re like, you know, this doesn’t actually light me up anymore. I think that’s the big distinction between, how do you know whether you’re the right fit for the place that you’re at?
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah, that’s so true. You mentioned on the site, and you’ve brought it up multiple times here already, that one of the most important, but really the most challenging, is the team right, getting the right team. And so first question for in your experience, why? Why is that so hard? But it seems like we’ve been doing organizations for a really long time. We’ve been doing startups for a really long time. Why is it still such a mystery for so many people?
Kate Blake
Well, I think because hiring is hard, you know? And people think that they’re getting it wrong and they’re they need to improve it, you know, if you’re doing it well, if you’re at a fast moving startup, the numbers say that if you’re doing it well, you keep two out of five hires. That’s awesome, because you’re being think about it. You’re going, it’s like going on three dates with somebody, and being like, Hey, you want to move into my apartment? Right? I mean, you’re, should we? Should we, like, get get right into it, like, maybe we should talk about having kids. You know, it’s, it’s challenging, because especially on, like, your first couple of dates, people are in their best outfit, and they’re bringing their best attitude, and there’s excitement, and, you know, so we don’t see a lot of that sort of true color of, like, what happens when you feel like you’ve run into a roadblock, yeah, how much do you trust yourself to ask for help or to lean say, like, listen, here’s my perspective and how I would approach this, but I’m sure I have some blind spots. How do we create this collectively? You know? So I think it’s hard in that aspect, especially because there’s a lot, often times there’s a lot of proving energy that’s in the space, and people who, you know, people get really good at telling the stories. So there’s actually a really great book that I happen to happen here, called who it’s the the A method for hiring. It’s Jeff Smart and Randy Street. It’s the best hiring book I’ve ever had. This is like a handbook. You should get this for. It’s a great outline for how to write job descriptions, how to go through the hiring process. What’s the interview process look like? It’s just such a that everybody should have a copy of that on their bookshelf. You should get it one behind you.
Scott Ritzheimer
I love it, and I love that you went there, because I feel like when I look through the other parts of your list, you know, right product, right time to market, making sure you’ve got cash, I would say, as those are hard things, right? I’m not glossing over that, but I think most founders feel like that’s what they’ve signed up for, right? Like, if I’m gonna create something from nothing, it’s gonna be hard, but I find that that most founders feel the least equipped to build the team, right? How do I write a job description? How do so? I love that you brought that up.
Kate Blake
And also least equipped to control it, right? Yes, like all the other markers, you know, especially, most startups are talking about distributed teams. So it’s data driven, right? You’re creating tiny little proof points, basically, many exercises, like mini experiments, and you’re looking at the data, right? So we’re just moving closer to towards a marker, human beings you can’t measure in that way, right? You better figure out, you know, I think there’s this misunderstanding people think I as a leader, have to figure out how to motivate people and inspire them. And I promise you, you could spend every moment of your last days of breath trying to do that. If you were trying to do that. For me, it’s impossible, even if it was that your 100% attention, intention and attention we’ve got to do instead is figure out from people, what is the thing that’s actually going to get you so excited that you’re going to beat your alarm because you cannot imagine, can’t wait to get in here to work on something. Yeah, if you ask an average employee that they don’t know how to answer that. So getting their co creation in, what it is that they’re doing their buy in, you know, asking them those questions, helping them come to a solution and figure out where it overlaps with what the organization wants, right even if you just a simple question, what do you not know how to do right now that you’d love to know how to do in six months? And we get everybody lined up in that way they feel suit like that commitment and that connection, that in investment, in what gets them excited is what keeps them engaged. It keeps what gets them, you know, thinking of the company is more than just numbers and more than just like an outcome, right? And you look at any study, engagement with just like productivity goes off the chart.
Scott Ritzheimer
One of the things that I’ve found is it’s a lot easier. It’s it’s hard to do those things, and in terms of just building the skills and habits of it, it’s not actually all that complicated, but it’s a lot harder to do those things when you have the wrong people on the team, right and so again, pulling from your experience, having done this so many times, I know there’s 1000 different ways that teams can be set up, but are there any common threads to who the right people? Are there any common characteristics that we should be looking for?
Kate Blake
I think at one point you know part of it is making sure you have a good understanding of your own your have your own self awareness, because we have a list of assets or skills that people need to be able to accomplish once we do that, once we get those all checked off, then we kind of, we have almost this unconscious awareness around, well, do I like this person? What I want to actually spend time with them? Do I want, you know, that’s kind of where we lean on, you know, almost unconsciously. The tricky bit about that is that what that means is you’re hiring people that you feel comfortable with because they’re a reflection of you. You probably would do a lot of things the same way you would. You know, you have similar background, you have that kind of thing. That can be fine, except for the fact that, if you are a self starter. And you do not feel comfortable asking for help. And you just, like, pick up the thing, and you do it on your own, and you get it all to go, and you did that’s you just like, at you might even somewhere kind of the back of your mind, think that asking for help is really a weakness, that kind of thing. You’re now going to hire a whole bunch of team members that are doing exactly that same thing. Yeah. So their ability to work together, their ability to connect, and their ability to actually thrive together, is pretty small. If we are making sure that we’ve got some connectors in there and we’ve got the way of communicating and understanding how it is that you are leading, because they’re going to mimic that.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, yeah. So true. So, Kate, there’s this question I like to ask everyone, and I’m very curious to see what you’d have to say. So what would you say is the biggest secret that you wish wasn’t a secret at all. What’s that one thing you wish everybody watching and listening today knew?
Kate Blake
I think, if you excuse me, I think we have an idea that, as we’re tracking, you know, Product Market Fit and systems and scalable items and softwares and, you know, tactical approaches, we think that that’s the majority of what makes a business run. And I would almost completely disagree. I there’s an importance of them. I think it’s about 20% of actually what leads you to success. The other 80% is about how it is that you are showing up, how you feel, and where you’re making decisions from. If you’re making decisions from a place of scarcity, of lack of overwhelm, you’re making the wrong choices. I mean, if you think about it, like, if we think about systems and doing the right thing, like, let’s say we go back to that dating analogy, right? So we get the guy, and we get him and the perfect suit, and we do his hair, and we get him in the right, he’s got the great glasses, he looks amazing, and we’re going to bring him into a room full of potential women who could date him. That’s the stuff, right? That’s all the tactical pieces, the systems, all those things. In the meantime, if he internally feels like I am such a loser, there’s no way these women are going to talk to me, his shoulders start to kind of fold in. He’s just, if there’s no self confidence at all, no one in that room is going to talk to him.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah.
Kate Blake
Reversing that, if you bring somebody in the room who looks a little bit like, All right, what’s this about? But he loves himself. He feels confident. He’s funny, he engages with people knowing about his own shortcomings. And like, look at I know there’s a whole bunch of things I have to learn, but I actually like who I am. Yeah, that confident piece and that, that ability to hold your own sense of agency is the most important thing, both as a leader and for the success of your business.
Scott Ritzheimer
It’s so true. Yeah, it’s so true. And it’s one of the kind of temptations of our space is that’s harder to do, right? That’s harder to teach, it’s harder to coach through it’s easier to say, hey, go do this. Go do that. Wear this, wear that, right? And it can be an easy button, both for the entrepreneur and for the coaches that are helping them. And it’s such a great reminder to all of us involved, to really do the real work, right? Yeah, to really do the real work.
Kate Blake
Yeah. And I think, you know, when you look at the kind of the world of coaching, when people had their experiences that are not like, oh, the business went through the roof. I mean, that’s great. You know, I love it when my clients are like, you’ve actually changed my life. My wife has never met you, but she’s like, I am in love with this Kate person. Can we just keep her around? Right? Because it changes the whole way that you are as a person, not just simply how it is that you’re operating inside of the business. You know, we can look at some of those things right, like, how do you make a successful, scalable business? And proof points, and, you know, all the technical, technical, technical, tactical approaches. But the other thing is so much more important, and you’re right. It is harder. It takes a little bit more time to restructure behaviors and to move people in that direction, but it is so worth it, because I promise you, nobody started a business. Nobody started a business thinking I want to feel stressed and overwhelmed and like this thing is running my calendar. I have no agency in my life. Nobody. I don’t care how successful like you want to be, that doesn’t feel good and that’s going to end up, you know, impacting your results.
Scott Ritzheimer
Yeah, it’s so true. So true. Kate profound, absolutely couldn’t agree more. What a great challenge, a reminder. Thank you so much for being on the show. It’s really an honor having you here for those of you watching and listening, you know your time and attention mean 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 Kate Blake
Kate Blake is a catalyst for powerful human beings ready for breakthroughs. After a decade of experience as an advisor to start-up founders, Kate created a program that unleashes the human potential often buried by outdated workplace infrastructures. Part business wizard, part energetic businesswoman, part straight-talking best friend you didn’t know you needed, she helps you stay aligned as your mission’s power, responsibility, and business compounds. Consider her your guide to unlocking the nuanced agreements you’ve made to perform as you “should” instead of fighting for who you are.
Want to learn more about Kate Blake’s work at Kate Blake? Check out her website at https://kateblake.com/
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