The Intersection of Technology and Health – Interview with David Whelan
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Episode Summary
David J. Whelan is a seasoned strategy, business development, and general management executive building businesses and inspiring entrepreneurs at the intersection of technology, health, and wellness. David discusses how he combines his love for health and the tech industry into one, and what a successful pitch looks like, when aiming towards these types of investors. Listen in for so many great nuggets of wisdom from David on the topics of investing, raising capital, and building your network.
The Intersection of Technology and Health – Interview with David Whelan
Welcome to The Successful Pitch. Today’s guest is Dave Whelan, who is a seasoned strategy business development and general management executive, which builds business and inspires entrepreneurs at the intersection of technology and health and wellness. He’s a consultant and advisor and operating executive. He devotes his career to building successful businesses. He was an integral part of the creation of the New York Genome Center, a unique not for profit scientific research institute where he was a chief strategy officer and collaborated on the development of the business plan fund raising of $115 million. He launched one of the first fitness tracking wearables with 24 Fitness. He holds an MBA with honors from UCLA Anderson School and a BS in Symbolic Systems from Stanford University. Dave, congratulations on all that accomplishment and welcome to the show.
Thank you so much. I forgot about the with honors parts. I’m not even sure if I deserve that. Thank you for reminding me.
What is Symbolic Systems? What is that?
It’s Symbolic Systems. Essentially, it’s an artificial intelligence human computer interaction major at Stanford. It is indeed a real major. Marissa Mayer is probably a more famous alum of the Symbolic Systems program than me. Hopefully I can catch up with her at some point.
You’re in great company. How fantastic to be able to be that cutting edge on artificial intelligence, which is sort of the future internet of things and all kinds of stuff.
Exactly.
Wow. Let’s dive back into, what made start there? I want to hear about that. How did you even decide, “I want to learn about artificial intelligence and make that my major.”
The intersection of technology and health and wellness
You mentioned this intersection of technology and health and wellness. I’ve been in technology my whole life, or passionate about technology my whole life. The health care part came accidentally later. I was definitely one of those computer kids growing up. My first computer was a Texas Instruments, TI 994A, which was discontinued about a month after my parents invested in it for me. I switched over to Apple and I’ve been an Apple guy forever. In fact, I purchased the first Macintosh for my school district to run the high school newspaper back in the late 80s. Early adopter, and all of that got me excited about the world of artificial intelligence, which seemed to the next big thing at the time.
That led me to Carnegie Mellon for a year and then I transferred to Stanford. Loved Stanford, loved the program and was still passionate about technology. I graduated into what was not the best market for artificial intelligence. AI was in a dormant stage at the time. My first job out of college was actually with a biotech incubator, probably even before they were calling them incubators. I was hired not for my biotech expertise since I had none, but I was literally hired as the IT guy in this firm and that quickly evolved into more of an operations role. I guess I’ve actually been connected to life sciences my entire career but took a pause there after that job and spent about six years as a retained executive search consultant.
Again, this is mid to late 90s in San Francisco. It was just an amazing time for technology businesses, for telecom, eventually internet. Probably the best time ever to be a search consultant. We were building venture backs, senior management teams for again, technology companies, telecom companies, some biotech, some consumer, automotive. It was a lot of fun. I probably could’ve stayed doing that forever but I was about to turn 30, really wanted to get my MBA. At the same time, the dotcom crash was happening so it was a perfect time to take a change of scenery. I moved to LA to attend UCLA Anderson School as you mentioned.
As I said, I really loved Stanford undergrad but Anderson I think was absolutely the best time of my life. Amazing professors, especially in the world of entrepreneurship, an incredible network that I draw on every day and some great opportunities. Even though I love LA, it gave me a chance to study at London Business School on exchange, which was just an amazing opportunity in one of my favorite cities. This was beginning of second year of business school. I actually arrived in London on, I think it was the first, maybe second flight from LA to Heathrow after 9/11. Just a weird time to be travelling, weird time to be leaving the country but also an amazing time to look back and see what the world was thinking about the US during those days. A sidebar, but interesting time.
I graduated with my MBA in 2002 and I’ve spent the past almost fifteen years now as strategy consultant, advisor, interim executive. That’s been areas as broad as technology generally, in aerospace, in defense, but more and more the health and wellness space. You mentioned the wearable world, which was my entrée into that. I was working with a subsidiary of 24 Hour Fitness and we had a chance to launch what was one of the first fitness wearables and online nutrition programs. This is way back in 2004. We were absolutely ahead of our time. Lesson learned there is do not launch a fitness wearable in a world that doesn’t have the iPhone or Facebook. It will fail.
Let’s talk about that for a second because I think one of the most important things when you’re pitching an investor, there’s two questions, why you and then the big one is why now? If you have this great idea but now is not the right time for Uber or fitness wearables if people don’t have enough smartphones to use them.
Technology and Health: We had this intersection of need and technology and an amazing solution.
Exactly. First of all, we were, in some ways, lucky enough to be part of this large global organization that was looking at investments perhaps a different way than a venture investor would, but the same questions I think apply. The why now aspect in some ways made a lot of sense from a standpoint of the need was there, the technology was coming together. We had this intersection of need and technology and actually an amazing solution. The challenge comes essentially from the network effect aspect or the lack thereof in this case. When you think about something that’s very personal like fitness data, fitness tracking and ultimately hitting your goals, or when you think of anything that involves connecting with other people, you’ve got to have the tools and technology to allow for that network effect.
Again, in a world without smartphones, without Facebook, we were launching into a vacuum. The exciting thing about that is ultimately the company that we were partnered with, which is called BodyMedia, got acquired by Jawbone. Their technology is still involved in what I think will be Jawbone’s new clinical work. The founder of that company, BodyMedia, is Astro Teller, who went on to run Google X or Alphabet X, whatever they’re calling it now. The cutting edge, a bunch of new technologies. There was some amazing people that were part of that. A lot of the efforts lived on. I took that experience about health care data, again, put it in the back of my mind for a little while. I was doing some work in aerospace and defense.
A few years later, this is back in 2010, ended up getting a call from a friend of mine who was in the life sciences real estate and economic development world in New York. She had a colleague we’re working on this for, what they were calling New York Genome Center. I basically saw this as a three month consulting opportunity with a trip or two to New York that ended up being a three year crazy ride with almost weekly commutes between LA and Manhattan, where we launched this large scale, non profit research institute. I was the first business person the team.
As you said, helped to write the business plan. I was part of this massive fundraising effort, helped to recruit the launch team and ultimately set the wheels in motion for what is now a world class research facility that is part of multi million dollar NIH funding grants for things around Alzheimer’s and autism. They’re doing some amazing work. I’m convinced that someday, some aspect of cancer is going to be cured there or something like that and it’ll an amazing thought that I was involved from the beginning.
That must make your passion really strong for making a difference in the world. Talk about the fundraising for non profit of over $115 million. Is that from one big government grant or do you go pitch it, like you would if you were a profit company with Angel and VCs?
This was very much multiple funders and very much like a pitch for venture backed startup. In fact, while this was a non profit, we were in some ways running it very much like a technology startup in terms of how we built the plan, built the business model, even recruited. From a funding standpoint, we started out by talking to what will be the course stakeholders, which were the academic institutions, the large hospitals in New York and literally going door to door, drumming up support. This was maybe a little bit different from an early venture effort.
If you think about getting in front of Angels, in front of incubators and accelerators, just in front of the movers and shakers in your community. This was very much what we were doing. Helping them understand what the vision was, why New York needed this, what the opportunities would be for them and their institutions as well as beyond. Those academic leaders, academic and medical leaders in New York, then led to some of the major philanthropic funders, led to some commercial funders. Ultimately with that momentum, we were able to go to the city of New York, the state of New York and ultimately even some other, as I mentioned, more recently they’ve got an NIH funding. This builds on itself.
Technology and Health: There’s a lot of similarities in terms of how you tell the story, how you get in front of one person, which leads to others.
While I can say that raising money for a large non profit in New York is in some ways much easier than raising money for a for profit venture in San Francisco or Los Angeles. I think there’s a lot of similarities in terms of how you tell the story, how you get in front of one person, which leads to others. Ultimately, how you use one success, one small success to move the next one. Eventually, you can bring in hundreds and millions of dollars to get this thing off the ground.
You’ve talked about networking twice, once with your experience in how the UCLA Anderson MBA continues to help you with your network and now you just brought it up again, which I love, which is one network connection gets you into another network connection. Can you give an example or a case study story of that happening for you?
Sure. Again, you hit the nail on the head in terms of networks leading to other ones. Actually, I’ll start with a story. This just came to me last week. One of my inspirations in the life sciences world, who also has a connection to UCLA Anderson School, is a guy named Larry Bock. Larry lived in San Diego, actually he just passed away last week after a struggle with cancer. That’s why he’s been on my mind very much recently. I never met him but inspiration to me in terms of this guy literally built 50, 60 life sciences companies in San Diego and beyond. He was part of the Illumina founding team and the genome sequencing space. He also had a passion for STEM education, launched science fairs, science festivals.
The Rainforest: The Secret to Building the Next Silicon Valley
He was highlighted a few years ago in a book called The Rainforest, which was talking about the Silicon Valley eco system. He was highlighted as, what they call, a keystone species in anthropological or ecological standpoint. Keystone species are these standout species that somehow make connections and exist in different eco systems or pull them together. In the context of innovation, this book highlights keystone species as someone who connects people who could benefit from working together. They might not work together under normal circumstances because of things like geography or cultural differences or trust or things like that.
When I think about it, and I’ve been inspired by that my whole career as trying to be a connector. Ultimately the idea is everyone is part of hopefully several networks, maybe many networks. This could be schools, it could be workplaces, it could be religious organizations, it could be geographic communities, it could be volunteer efforts. Each of those networks hopefully is a source of amazing connections. Everyone needs to think about how they keep each of those networks fresh, how they stay connected to them, how they contribute to those networks.
Back to this idea of the keystone species and Larry Bock, how do you actually take the leap to help connect people from these vastly diverse networks in a way that they would never meet each other but once they do, something amazing comes from it? I think it’s the idea that you can be at a cocktail party with your friends and have a conversation with someone and realize that this ties into the business meeting you were in last week or the conference that you were attending last month and you start to connect the dots and start to bring people together in a way that creates these really rich interactions. Hopefully, what comes out of that are businesses that would never have existed or investment connections that wouldn’t have happened. Eventually, you can change the world because you’re connecting people in a way that is very unique, very creative and hopefully redefining an industry.
Wow, that’s great. You’re almost like the catalyst, set up those connections that would never have made. If you connect the dots first and see the big picture and then step out of the way, magic can happen.
Exactly. I was at a conference a few weeks ago called Ideas Los Angeles, which was an amazing multi cultural, multi faceted conference around both health technology and entertainment technology in LA, Silicon Valley and beyond. First of all, I invited a ton of people to this event and so I ended being able to introduce people who, not only might not have met but were in the same place. There was one person I met there who was working on an amazing integrative health and wellness business and another one of the companies that I advise, which is building conference app tools for the life sciences industry. I saw some connections there and couldn’t introduce them directly at the event and tried to introduce them after the event.
[Tweet “Technology and Health: It takes vision and creative foresight.”]
One of the individuals said, “That sounds cool. I don’t really see the connection. It doesn’t make sense right now.” I actually pushed both of them to get together and talk about their commonalities and where they might be able to collaborate. Both of them after this meeting said, “Wow, this is great. We never would’ve even thought about this. Thank you for making the connection.” Again, sometimes it takes some vision, sometimes it takes some creative foresight, sometimes it just takes luck where you hope people will connect. If they do, great. If they don’t, there’s honestly no harm and maybe they’ve met someone that at least they like socially.
You’re creating real value so when they come across someone that they can refer to you as a potential client, as a consultant, they’re more than happy to do it, which is a great way to drive business.
Exactly.
Let’s take a little dive into when you raised over $25 million with the Precision Medicine venture. That was a for profit I’m guessing, yes?
Yeah. Again, another unique angle on fundraising. This was a commercial spin off from a hospital, from a cancer hospital, that was a public benefit corporation in New York. Which means it’s a non profit enterprise that’s got ties to the state, operates somewhat independently but in many ways like a state organization. In that effort, we were really focused on the typical starting point of let’s understand what the opportunity is and build the plan and start to build the story. We were putting together relationships where we were seeking funding both from the hospital system itself as well as from, ultimately from the state, both existing state moneys, Empire State Development Corporation, which is the state’s economic development arm, and eventually teeing this up for broader external investment.
[Tweet “Technology and Health: See the opportunity, build a plan, build the story.”]
Again, a little bit of unique twist on funding. In some cases I think, when you’re in a funding situation, and you could argue it happens to people in any company when they’re going to their boss, when they’re going to the general manager, their division, and they’re trying to fight for budget for the next year. Ultimately, planning for your budget for the year, planning for budget for a product launch, a marketing strategy or an invest in a company, there’s a lot of similarities. It’s really about having your plan straight, having your numbers straight. Being able to tell a story in a really strong way to get these people not only wanting to be a investor and a funder but ultimately being an advocate, being an ally, being someone who can then take your story to the next funder. Whether that’s moving in an organization, whether it’s going to the board or whether it’s going to a larger a investor down the line. Again, I think there’s a lot of common ground there.
When you’re talking about health care and you’re saying the importance of a story when you’re pitching for this kind of money, do you give an example of one particular patient and that person’s story so it’s really specific? “If we get this money, then we can do this for this cancer hospital and save someone like XYZ person who was suffering and who doesn’t have to suffer,” for example?
I think that’s absolutely one angle. The great thing about health care is that while it’s a large industry, really the largest industry out there by some measures, it’s also very personal. Everyone has dealt with health care on their own, they certainly dealt with it with their children, with elderly relatives. Health care is just, by definition, a very personal topic. This idea that when you’re telling a story, how do you do something that can provoke, that can inspire, that can challenge, that can tease what the solution will be? Bringing it back to something that is very personal, very relatable.
Technology and Health: Build a story that can provoke, inspire, challenge, and tease.
I’ve certainly seen, not so much in an investor pitch, but certainly in public pitches or public presentations. Even the ability to bring a consumer, bring a patient into the story physically, bring them into this presentation to have them tell their story. Have them talk about where they’ve come from, who their family is, where this disease, this condition, this situation came about, what was the discovery process, what was the diagnosis process? Then either they’re pushing for a cure, which is that big north star vision, a massive goal we can think, about or they’re sharing how this solution might have helped. I find that something that the public loves, investors love but it’s also something that I think really is the way to connect the scientist and physicians to this whole investor conversation and customer conversation.
I think there’s a lot of people who give scientists or physicians a bad rap because they’re not always business people and they don’t have that business mentality. That might be true in some ways but from my standpoint, when I work with scientist and physicians, I help guide them and help them realize that in many ways, the scientific method and scientific research are really a lot like entrepreneurship. You got to identify a problem, create a hypothesis, find the funding, pilot your solution in some way, you asses the results, you course correct and then you keep at it until you’re successful.
When I get in front of scientists and talk to them about this fundraising effort shouldn’t be scary, shouldn’t be foreign. It’s actually something you do all the time anyway. This whole idea of building a company is not that different from putting together a massive experiment and hopefully coming out with some great results. Once I make those connections for scientists and physicians, it clicks in a way where they become a really strong part of the process, which then makes them that much more sellable or approachable or understandable to not only investors but ultimately the customers or consumers who are buying this.
What you’ve done is you’ve given them a story, an analogy to follow to create a story. You say, think of it in terms of how you do scientific work and then just transfer that to the ability to run a business. You create story that they are familiar with and that’s the power of storytelling. When you can get people to put themselves in the story, then they come alive. I really like what you said, when you pitch, you want to provoke, inspire and tease the solution. We’re going to tweet that out from the episode, that’s a great line. Let’s switch gears really briefly here about what you did at the Chinese Casino Game Leasing venture. That sounds interesting.
There’s some good lessons and some cautionary tales in that one for sure. As I said, the intersection of technology and health and wellness, sometimes that is very much in the health and wellness space. Sometimes it’s a little bit more on the tech space. A few years ago, actually through a business school network connection, I got introduced to a Chinese, almost family office investment group, that was in the process of assembling an investment fund to acquire some casino game leasing operations in Taiwan and the Philippines. This is a few years ago. I’ve traveled a lot of places, but at the time I had never been to Asia.
First of all, I saw this as an opportunity to learn more about Asia and hopefully I get a chance to spend some time there, which I ultimately did. A whirlwind due diligence trip to the Philippines, to Taiwan and being up in Shanghai to meet with the family. We were building, very much building a story about what this business could look like and ultimately trying to pitch it to US investors. That was my connection, was building this bridge of a story between the Shanghai family, these businesses in the Philippines and Taiwan and then US investors. We went really far down this process. Again, there’s not going to be a happy ending here. We went really far down this process. Interestingly, I was actually thinking about this longer term because the family also had investments in the massively growing, if you could imagine, retirement community business within China. If you think that the US has a large aging population and a large retirement community population, just imagine what China has with many more people.
They were actually looking at leveraging some of these technologies into mind games and games and tools for maintaining mental acuity, mental sharpness in old age. I was thinking about this from a health care standpoint all along. As we pushed forward with this effort, sadly, unfortunately, this will be my second time mentioning death on this life sciences health care podcast, not by design. Anyway, the senior member of this family passed away from a kidney transplant that didn’t take. Obviously, their business was in turmoil from that. Literally, the entire business not only collapsed and unwound, as might happen with any family business anywhere. But it was sucked back essentially to the party, to the government financial entity.
[Tweet “Technology and Health: Leverage opportunities even if they go wrong.”]
Long story short is I’m still trying to collect on that project. I’ll call it a loss at this point. Very much lessons learned about doing international business. I did learn a lot. I’ve actually been back to China twice since that for other ventures. I think if anything, what’s my personal takeaway? It’s leverage opportunities even if they don’t turn out the way you’d like to, to be able to start to get comfortable with a new market or a new geography. Now, I feel very comfortable doing business in China. I’d have to find a different way to structure a deal. I guess, you really can’t plan for everything.
What a great thing to be able to say, “I feel comfortable doing business in China.” There’s not a lot of people today that can say that. That, in and of itself, makes you extremely marketable. Before I let you go, because the half hour is already up, it goes so fast with someone like you. What is a book you would like to recommend about business or personal that you think would be inspiring for entrepreneurs?
I’ve got two books, if I can do that.
Sure.
Book about Technology and Health: The Checklist Manifesto
Because they’re so different. One, it’s a business book that’s also a health care book called The Checklist Manifesto. This is about a six, seven year old book by Harvard physician, Atul Gawande. It’s got some amazing business lessons, life lessons. Simple but powerful. How you can use checklists to get business done, get health care done, improve results. Why I love it is, I actually first encountered it back when I was doing consulting to Boeing engineering teams. They were using this as part of a way to improve their engineering efforts. Interestingly, it comes full circle because the book is about health care, using checklist in health care to improve results.
Atul Gawande actually was inspired originally to write this book and develop this process based on checklists that Boeing, once upon a time, used, Boeing test pilots used back in the 1930s. It was this aerospace into health care back into aerospace where I first saw it. Things really come full circle. If you think about going after funding, launching a computer, whatever, making sure you’re following the basic checklist and not missing a step is critical. That’s the business side.
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
The other one which is, it’s a fiction book that everyone needs to read because it will help redefine what business looks like. It’s a five year old book called Ready Player One by Ernest Cline. Again, it’s a fiction book but if you work in technology you need to read this. It’s intersection of media and culture, virtual reality and social networking. A couple years ago when Facebook acquired Oculus Rift, there were a bunch of people who popped up on Twitter and said, “Look guys, Ready Player One is happening here.” This book is just an amazing fun read. If you’re an 80s pop culture buff, it’d fall in there. I think it really points to where the future of social media, virtual reality, augmented reality and to some extent, life, is going. If you look at the buzz of the Pokemon Go over the past week, you see how people can get so excited about some of these technologies. We’re going to see a lor more of that.
I love it. We’ll put both of those books in the show notes for people. Dave, how can people follow you on social media? What’s your Twitter, and if somebody wants you to hire you to help them in a wide variety of things from China to health care, what’s the best way to follow you on social media?
My website which has my bio and ways to connect to me is BespokeStrategy.com. I live on Twitter and I was an early person on Twitter @DJWhelan. I think I’m @DJWhelan on every social media tool out there except for Snapchat where I missed the boat. I’m @BespokeStrategy on Snapchat. You can find me there. @DJWhelan will get to me almost everywhere.
Sounds great. Thanks again Dave, for being such a great guest.
Really appreciate it. Thanks for the opportunity.
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Getting Over Rejection – Interview with Eileen Tanghal
Posted by John Livesay in podcast | 0 comments
Listen To The Episode Here
Episode Summary
Eileen Tanghal is the Vice President of New Business Exploration and New Business Ventures at ARM, a UK-listed chip designer. Eileen shares tips on overcoming imposter syndrome, why there’s a lack of women in venture capital, and she even dives into China’s startup culture. Eileen believes good entrepreneurs have resilience, but they also know when it’s time to move on after receiving enough rejections from investors.
Getting Over Rejection – Interview with Eileen Tanghal
Hi. Welcome to The Successful Pitch podcast. Today’s guest is Eileen Tanghal. Eileen has an amazing background. She was named in the Global Corporate Venturing Power List of 2014. She was one of the general managers of Applied Ventures and has her career soar. She’s had over nineteen years of experience working with early stage technology companies across the globe.
She led several tech investments and collaborative partnerships with companies before joining Applied Ventures, she was an investment director in the London office of a venture firm Kennet Partners. Before that, she was an investment associate at Amadeus Capital. She has been in-charged of a $200 million portfolio with over 40 companies. Now, she is the VP of new business expiration at ARM, which is a semiconductor IP design firm in the Valley. Eileen, welcome to the show.
Thanks so much.
I’m so impressed when someone’s been doing something globally, like you are, with your MBA from London Business School and your BS in Electronic Engineering and a Computer Science degree from MIT. You are one of the few women who have that kind of technical background and are in the venture capital world. What do you think that is all about, that that there’s so few women doing what you’re doing?
I’ve had this question a number of times. The first thing that people really talk about is the pipeline problem within STEM and that there are just so few women studying electrical engineering, computer science. I’m here to dispel that. I went to an MIT reunion of electronics and computer science majors in San Francisco just a couple of months ago. The chair of the department told me for the first time, out of the sophomores declaring their major, half of them are women. That’s of course up from the ten percent. I struggle to see the pipeline issue that many are talking about.
Getting Over Rejection: There’s not enough advocacy of women getting into that venture capital field.
What I think is more of the issue is, there’s not enough advocacy of women getting into that venture capital field. My own experience was that the head of the firm that I first worked for, the co-founder, woman named Anne Glover. She made it her goal and mission to find young women who she could mentor and build up. She herself is the first BVCA female chairman. Standing for British Venture Capital Association. There’s not enough advocacy.
How do you that? You probably need to start programs, Kauffman Fellows is one of them, where you encourage women to look at venture capital, to understand what it’s about, to see that really this isn’t an old boys club that people from certain schools that have certain degrees and certain connections can only get into. It is open for everyone. Again, unless I had had that mentor, someone really pushing me up, I wouldn’t have known to have gone into this field or how to be successful in it.
I’ve also heard the, I won’t name who but let’s just say, very famous venture capitalist told me the reason why it’s hard for women to be venture capitalists is because they don’t have the connections into the startup column guys. Of course, the reality is that the majority of startups are going to be these male engineers coming from certain schools. That is true, that’s unfortunately, I think, still true because of maybe the risk appetite. What he told me is that women, they don’t know how to therefor relate to that or have those guys talk to them and be comfortable talking to them.
[Tweet “Getting Over Rejection: You need advocacy to try to bring women up”]
I think that’s hogwash honestly. Last time I checked, they have no problem talking to a women and telling that woman what they’re doing. I think that if you have that mentality, that’s going to stop. This person is a very, very senior person in the industry who said that to me. You need to dispel those, whether they’re conscious or unconscious biases, and then you need advocacy to try to bring women up and show them that this is possible. I can tell you, there is a dearth of female VCs. It’s very, very hard to find any … I think it starts with you got to have advocates, you have to have training, you have to show them, bring them in as analysts and associates and then show them they can be successful.
I think that’s great, especially since you had a mentor that allowed you to get into this world, I’m guessing that you’re a mentor yourself. Is that true?
I try to be. I think at Applied, before I came over to ARM, where I am now, I did recruit a woman into our India office. I did try to train her in the industry. That was my way of maybe giving back. Yes, I do a lot of informal mentoring but formal mentorship, I’m trying to get into. The one thing that’s interesting is that whenever you think of the word mentoring, sometimes you think it’s just about women coming up.
Getting Over Rejection: A lot of women think they’re impostors, not realizing how much they’ve accomplished.
I’ll share an interesting fact with you. People who are just my peers and maybe even a couple years younger, for whatever reason they lack confidence sometimes so I do a lot of maybe talking to other women who are my peer level, trying to explain to them, “You were a lot more qualified than perhaps you’re making yourself out to be.” There’s a lot of studies on this, about when a job requisition is out, a female will not apply unless she meets 100% and a male will apply if he meets like half or less than half. There are studies.
There’s a lot of women thinking that they’re impostors, not really realizing how much they’ve accomplished. I’ll give you just an interesting case in point. I have a very close niche set of girl friends from MIT. These are very, very accomplished. They went to the hardest schools, some of them have PhDs. I don’t. There was this confidence test, how confident are you? Roughly eight or nine of us all took this. Seven of them are in the non-confident.
Wow.
This is like, “You have a PhD from Cornell, a PhD from NYU. You are near the top of your field and you don’t …” Thanks to my parents and my mentors, I am more on the confident side. They make fun of me and the other one that happened to be on there. The rest of us are going, “I don’t understand how this can be your view of yourself.” Very interesting.
A lot mentoring, yes, you mentor the young women. I’m very proud I have a niece who is currently at the Stanford Coding Camp and she’s one of just a few women. She told me she wanted to be a lawyer or the president, which of course is very heartening to me. Of course I’m going, “You should be a venture capitalist.” I’m trying to explain to her what it is. Start early like that.
You got to start somewhere. Sure.
She has a lot of confidence and I think that’s from her parents. For the girl friends that don’t, you need to help them out and say, “You’re a lot more than what you think you are.” It is really amazing how often I have to do that, and a bit sad.
It’s a subject near and dear to my heart Eileen, because I work with clients all the time. I’m telling them the importance of being confident when you pitch to investors like you. If you got a founder that doesn’t have any confidence, pitching to an investor that doesn’t feel confident in who they are, it’s a lose-lose situation. Everyone has to feel confident in who they are and what they bring to the table.
That’s right because we can tell. If you don’t feel confident, you may actually have a wonderful product and a really well executed plan but we’re getting a vibe like you don’t know what you’re talking about so then you turn off unconsciously.
Let’s take a little deeper dive into that concept of feeling like an impostor. I think everyone has a sense of that, even with the most accomplishments, whether it’s a PhD from a top school or a successful exit from another company. What is it, something inside has to snap and turn the switch for you to finally feel like you’re enough and that it’s no longer an impostor? Do you have any insights on how you have done that?
What Works for Women at Work: Four Patterns Working Women Need to Know
Yes. I have had a lot of help in that. I have a really supportive family around me, especially my parents. They are complimenting me constantly. I think sometimes it actually does take someone outside to point out to you what you have done. It was nice to get some of these awards because of course you’re like, “Oh, I didn’t realize you noticed that I had done all that.”
One of these books, What Works for Women at Work. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that book, which I think every single women should read. It’s true for everyone. A lot of women unfortunately face this ‘prove it again bias’, meaning you’ve done it before but you didn’t do it here so do it again. One way to combat that is as soon as someone gives you a compliment or recognizes what you have done, you should ask them to write it down and email it to yourself. You should keep a little bit of a book like that.
I love that.
When I’m feeling a bit down, I look back at some of those. The other thing is, I’ve just been on this leadership class. There’s something called a ‘reflected best self exercise.’ You ask your peers, not just business peers but of course people outside, when have you seen me being my best? They answer and they’ll explain. I have fortunately received that from people I work with, from my friends. Again, anytime you’re feeling a bit down, you read the reflected best self, these things that people have recognized that you’ve accomplished.
That little voice of, “You don’t know what you’re doing,” will eventually get drowned out because you’re going, “Self, look at what other people are saying.” A lot of it should be aid self-confidence buildup. That is good too. I think, what is my advice for, “Look, Eileen. I don’t want to ask 100 people to talk about how great they think I am. I want to find it in myself.” I think a lot of self-reflection, meditation, writing down what you’ve done, that will help. Again, definitely, when other people are commenting, it’s nice. It drowns out any doubt.
[Tweet “Getting Over Rejection: When have you seen me being my best?”]
I love that analogy of drowning it out. To me, it’s that great story of if you pour enough clean water into a bowl of dirty water, it will eventually get clean. That same concept with enough positive reinforcement internally and externally will drown out that negative self-talk.
For me, I always want to be liked for sure. A friend of mine, very wise friend was saying, “Look, not everyone’s going to like you. You are going to encounter situations where it isn’t going to go your way.” A lot of it too is just to say, “Look, it happened. Accept it. Move on.” That moving on part, not dwelling in the past or living for the future but living in the moment is also extremely important I think, not to keep you down if you face some setback or crisis or confidence issue.
[Tweet “Getting Over Rejection: Move on and don’t dwell on rejection.”]
That’s what it takes to be an entrepreneur and a founder, doesn’t it? Especially when you’re pitching and getting a lot of no’s from potential investors, you have to let it go. You can’t drag in that negative no or feedback from a previous investor to your next pitch.
Absolutely right. I think one thing that entrepreneurs should see is, you know what the Midas list is, the list of people who have done the best investments. I think there used to be something called the anti-Midas list, which was venture capitalists were listing the top ten or fifteen deals that they turned down, which of course ended up becoming wonderful companies. As an entrepreneur, you just got to keep that in mind. We’re human too, we make mistakes. We wake up, we get out of bed every day and have a certain mood when we get to see you.
It’s just like the movie studio business. There’s certain executives that turn down hit movies.
That’s right. You just got turned down by somebody, you go look and say, “Person missed this deal and that deal and maybe they’ve just missed mine. Move on.” It’s usually never personal. It is never personal I think. Unless you’re some fraudulent … That’s different. It’s normally, there’s no X factor or there’s no, “I’ve seen that a million times or I lost money in that already before and I don’t want to take the chance,” whatever it is. Keep going. Resilience is extremely important. Definitely, entrepreneurs need to have a high reserve of resilience.
[Tweet “Getting Over Rejection: Entrepreneurs need a high reserve of resilience.”]
I like that. A high reserve of resilience. We’ll tweet that out. Eileen, you heard so many pitches in your career. What makes a good pitch to you?
Remember, I was a venture capitalist in both Europe and here in the US.
Tell us about the differences.
Of course, the European style is much more understated. If you go there and you’re expecting the typical, The Garage Guys and Art Of The Start and sort of, “We’re going to be the Uber of dry cleaning or whatever,” that’s very American. Extremely American I’d say. I don’t want to say, “Yes, you should use a one liner to describe what your business model is and comparing it to a successful business and therefor you will get everybody’s attention.” Yes, there’s place for that.
That’s really nice because it shows enthusiasm and you’ve got it down succinctly, you understand your high value problem, you’re explaining why you have a unique solution and then the correct team that you’ve hired. If you hit all those elements, that’s really nice. I love it when I see that. “We are blah, blah, blah. We have the five world experts. We are 10X about our competition. The TAM is a couple billion dollars and growing 50%. We’re going to take that. Just in case you didn’t realize, people in our industry who’ve already exited 10X.” There’s that. That is very American style pitch.
Getting Over Rejection: The really good entrepreneurs, they tease you a little bit.
What I really like about some of the other pitches, some of the really good entrepreneurs, they tease you a little bit. They go, “We think this is …” Then some of the venture capitalist just start talking and they just let them talk and they go, “Yeah, actually we’ve seen that.” Then they’d come out with another piece of information that directly addressed whatever the thing was the venture capitalist had an issue with. I love when that happens to me actually because I’m like, “Oh God, that person really just put me in place.” Because it’s like, wow.
After you feel like you’ve looked at 20 pitches of the same thing, you go, “I know where this is going.” They say something and then they wait and then you start chiming in like, “Well, blah, blah, blah. Last time I looked at that pitch, that didn’t work. I invested in this company and they never got the X or Y, Z to work.” They just let you talk. In that stop they go, “It turns out, we’ve done ABC to address those problems and we’ve hit it.” I love that. I really, really love that. That’s my favorite because it’s like, he or she totally anticipated what I was going to ask him or her and nailed it. A lot of that is because the entrepreneur did research about me knowing what boards I sat on, knowing what companies I looked at, knowing what I’ve invested in or looked at and what my issues are.
[Tweet “Getting Over Rejection: Anticipate questions and do your research.”]
When they come, this is not, “Who are you, Eileen? Explain yourself to me.” It’s like, “She sat on the board of Plastic Logic. She has probably severe biases against doing anything plastic semiconductors. Let me find out a little more about what went wrong there and then explain why I have a breakthrough in plastic semiconductors that is going to blow her mind.”
Love it.
Like I said, that’s my favorite.
It’s basically anticipating the questions the investor will you and having really great answers to it. You’re doing your due diligence on the investor like an investor does due diligence on you.
That is the best. It’s not for flattery. I don’t really like that. Some entrepreneurs will do that. “Oh, I saw that da, da, da, da, da.” I’m like, “Yeah, that’s nice. Tell me why I’m going to like your thing better than what I’ve invested in before.”
I see you also have done some work with China at ARM. Can you tell us what’s going on with China?
China represents obviously a huge opportunity, not just for ARM, but for everyone. The pace at which innovation acceleration is happening is I believe faster than the Valley. There are some articles that are saying the typical cycle here might be five to seven years for startup, from start to transformation or exit, meaning IPO exit. I think there, it might be four, three or four years.
Getting Over Rejection: What’s been fascinating is indeed the speed at which things are getting done.
One is, we use a term called China speed. It’s probably used by a lot of people. What’s been fascinating is indeed the speed at which things are getting done, things are being innovated, ideas are coming in. I’m very proud that ARM has basically started an accelerator last year to help accelerate IOT startups in China. It was announced in China but not necessarily worldwide yet.
We are working on a fund there to invest in next generation technologies that are home grown. Not made in the US and transferred over, which is the second point, which is this mentality of we do everything here in the US or in the west and then we localize it for China. That’s not going to work. You need to, made in China for China.
It’s a cultural thing, isn’t it?
I think there’s lots of talents there to do it. It’s much faster.
When you say China speed, faster than even Silicon Valley. Is it twice as fast? Five times as fast?
It’s about, I think, 50% faster is my view. There is a sales guy here that has explained it like building a boat. Some cultures or one nation, when they’re trying to build a boat, they would put some architecture plans together, the materials, and they put it together and then they sail it. Others might look at several architectural plans, several types, try different experiments and then sail it. When they’re saying about China is they throw the wood and assemble the boat.
Got it. As it’s floating out the sea.
It’s go first then think later. You could say that seems irresponsible but actually I might argue that that’s the, talk about, lean model or fail fast. That’s definitely that model like, “Oh, guess I’m not floating. These pieces of wood are not coming together.”
I love that.
There’s a lot of them.
What you just gave us Eileen, is a great example of storytelling. Painting that picture of the difference between China speed versus Silicon Valley speed with the boat analogy. The more people put analogies and stories into their pitches, the more memorable it is and the more compelling it is. Thank you for that wonderful example.
Of course.
What is the type of company you like to invest in? Now, as a venture capitalist, I’m guessing you need to see certain amounts of revenue. It’s not seed funding where you’re pre revenue, correct?
I’ll talk in an ARM context. We at ARM are stage agnostic. Above and beyond, it should be strategic to us. Publicly, you’ll see that ARM of course is the architecture for most of the mobile devices out there. We are moving into IOT or actually already in IOT, so many of IOT type devices are ARM powered. We are incubating some businesses within ARM that are more on the software side of IOT. If you have a business that is related to connecting people, devices.
We provide technology invisibly to enable a global connected population.
What we like to say is that we want to provide technology invisibly, and that’s why a lot of people don’t know who ARM is because we try to be behind the scenes. Provide technology invisibly to enable a global connected population. If you have a piece of technology, whether it’d be software or semiconductor IP, we’re interested. Like I said, we’re stage agnostic. That is what ARM’s trying to do.
I think as most people perhaps know, when you got to corporate, it is very important that you have an executive sponsor for the investment. It’s not really about the stage, it’s about to what level are you, number one, related to ARM’s core strategy? Number two, to what extent does the executive sponsor believe he or she can influence you to be successful with ARM rather than without ARM?
How does a founder get an executive sponsor? Warm introductions?
I think the corporate development team or the incubation team or the new business venture team is like myself. We will facilitate those. We are acting like maybe the first filter. What I do is when I see something then definitely I will involve the next person and then that person will then bring it up to the exec. Because as you know, the execs within corporates are very, very busy doing their day jobs of selling. There are a couple of empowered groups and people who are able to look at a number of ideas, filter them down to a couple that they believe will make sense and then push those forward with the executive they work for or another executive. That’s how it works within ARM. I don’t want to generalize other companies.
We’ll just focus on ARM.
But in ARM’s case, that’s the way.
Can you give us a story or an example of some company that got an executive sponsor and is involved with connecting devices and people together that you heard that pitch and you went, “This is something that fits our strategy and we want to invest in it.” Now, they’re off and running and it’s already public that you funded them?
We have, in the connected device realm, we’ve actually made more acquisitions and investments. This connected device theme is pretty recent. That’s maybe the last two or three years. We acquired a company called Sensinode three years ago and we acquired a company called Sansa a year ago.
Tell us a little bit about what are those companies. What made it so compelling?
Sensinode is a connectivity platform for IOT devices. It’s to allow you to securely connect a device up to our platform. We have embed device services platform, which allows OEMs to securely create, deploy and provision IOT devices. Sensinode was really the connectivity layer, some security, some registry part. Sansa, which we bought last year, really allowed for the security. They had some novel IP for securing it, making sure the device was secured, as well as provisioning software to allow for the customer to provision, to say, “This device is a trusted entity in your network.”
Create, connect, secure, deploy, monitor, analyze IOT devices
If you want to think of it as we’re looking for technologies that can help each one of those verbs that I’ve just said, which is create, connect, secure, deploy, monitor, analyze IOT devices, that’s the spread of what we are looking at. I’m trying to think, the other companies that are related in which I believe it’s public is we are investors in a company called Trestonic. I’m trying to think of anything else as public. I don’t think there is except for Sansa, Sensinode and Trestonic.
That’s fine.
The rest are in negotiations.
Got it.
In the non IOT world and just looking at advanced semiconductors, we made an investment in a company called Pragmatic, which is about next generation plastic semiconductors. That’s an example of someone within the research group having an idea, reaching out to this company, bring it up through the CTOs organization and then the CTO ultimately sponsoring the investments and us having joint work with that company.
Apart from the connected device realm, which new business ventures, which I’m in, focuses on, there are other areas of interests within ARM. Specifically, even in the CTO and researches group around memory, next generation semis, people who are familiar with semiconductors and chips would probably … Next generation servers. That’s business as usual in terms of what ARM does. This connected is a newer, new business strategy that we’re focused on.
How wonderful for the early investors like Sansa for ARM to acquire them. That’s the ultimate successful exit, boy.
You bet.
Eileen, I love what you’ve said about confidence, getting over the impostor syndrome, getting over rejection and having what you call a high reserve of resilience. Most importantly, really anticipating the questions that you’re going to get asked when you go in to pitch. That’s been really, really helpful. We’re going to post this book that you recommended, What Works for Women at Work as one of the books that people should check out. How can people follow you? What’s your Twitter and all that good stuff?
I’ve been a little bit remiss to tweeting. My Twitter is @ETanghalVC. That is where I tend to post things. I also am avid an Facebook poster but I’m limited who I add. I sometimes post on LinkedIn so if you want to connect with me on LinkedIn. My @ETanghalVC, my tendency is to post quite a lot of things regarding women and venture capital.
Fantastic.
You want to know about that? Then definitely become one of my followers.
Great. Thanks so much, Eileen. It’s been a pleasure.
You’re welcome.
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Confidence And Presence – Interview with Alexa Fischer
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Episode Summary
Alexa Fischer was laying down, pretending to be dead, on the set of Bones, when she had an awakening. She loves acting, but she thought, “What am I doing with my life?” Call it luck, call it a sign, but less than a week later, Alexa got a call, out of the blue, to become a media trainer, and this is how she made the shift out of acting and into coaching. Today, she teaches her high-profile clients how to speak with confidence — not with arrogance — and how they can cultivate engaging conversations with the people they serve.
Confidence And Presence – Interview with Alexa Fischer
Hi. Welcome to The Successful Pitch podcast. Today’s guest is Alexa Fischer. She uses the skills she learned at, no less, the Yale School of Drama, which I believe Meryl Streep went to as well. We can ask her about that. She’s been on countless prime time television shows to help people speak with confidence and stay calm in any situation. Not only is she talented, but she’s versatile and her methods can be applied to board room pitches, public speaking and even cocktail small talk and probably pitching for funding. She’s worked with Fortune 500 companies like Trader Joe’s and Sony and worked with smaller philanthropic organizations like Step Up Women’s Network and Dress for Success.
She works with clients in group workshops, online training, one on one. She’s all about polishing your speaking and presentation skills. We can never get too many of those tips. She’s the creator of her signature program, Radiate Confidence; How to Create 1,000 Watt Presence, as well as launching her first physical product Wishbeads. Can’t wait to hear about that. Alexa, welcome to the show.
Thank you very much. You are correct, Meryl Streep did go to Yale.
That’s an impressive place to get into. I’m sure the auditions for that were not easy.
No, but you know what, it’s a great story. Because I will tell you, it was all about being in a great state of mind. When I went to that audition, you actually go to a hotel and there’s lots of different graduate programs all auditioning at the same time. I had just come from another audition for the University of California San Diego. I had so much fun in the room and I had worked with one of my personal heroes of stage. I went from that audition and literally walked into my Yale audition. I must have just been literally radiating this good energy because I was not thinking about, “Dun-da-da-da, it’s Yale. There’s a lot of pressure.” It was just great. I’m telling you, it was probably the reason why I got in, truthfully.
Listeners, we can take that right off the get go. There’s some great takeaways right there because auditioning for schools, colleges, whatever, is very similar to getting in front of investors. You probably do multiple meetings sometimes and your mindset before you step in that room is everything. Before we get into all of the goodies Alexa, paint the picture a little bit about your background. You made the decision to become an actress, and then when did you decide and why, it’s always the interesting question behind that, to become an entrepreneur?
Confidence And Presence: The reason why I was drawn to acting was truly because of my love of people.
For people who are not really familiar with how the entertainment industry works, is that it all seems so glamorous from the outside. Again, I was very honored to work at some really amazing television shows and some films and a ton of commercials. What you discover is that there is so much downtime, there is so much sitting around. For me, the reason why I was drawn to acting was truly because of my love of people. I’m fascinated by people. I’m fascinated by their motivations, by the way they express themselves. That’s really what great acting.
Yet, two things bothered me. One, I felt like I was wasting a lot of time sitting around on set endlessly. The second thing was, I fundamentally was bothered by this idea of people comparing themselves to the airbrush images of celebrities on People Magazine. It drove me crazy because celebrities are just like you and me. They really are. Some are fabulous, some are not so fabulous. They look like you and me, believe it or not. There’s is not anything super magical about them other than they have a very high profile job.
I’ve told this story because it is the God honest truth. I was working fifteen hours in at the shoot, filming an episode of the TV show Bones. I was playing a lawyer, something bad happened to my character. In the movie, in the script, I’m lying on the floor with blood coming out of my mouth, fake blood. I literally had that moment, after all of my training, after all of my dedication, after all of the countless successes and rejections of being in the entertainment industry, I had that moment where I said, “What am I doing with my life?” Because I’m lying there, just looking like a jerk, in my opinion. So ridiculous.
I literally put a call out to the universe internally and said, “Give me a sign.” There’s so much passion that I have. There’s so many talents that I feel that I have. Why can’t I put them to a higher calling? It’s not to say that I didn’t love acting, I still do. That was the shift. I kid you not, it was less than a week that I get a call out of the blue from a friend, a contact that I’d made in the entertainment industry. She was looking for a media trainer for a very high profile client of hers. She said, “I thought of you and I think you’d be terrific.”
Confidence And Presence: It was a journey of incredible tenacity but a great deal of curiosity
Boom, I was set on a different path. It was a journey of incredible tenacity but a great deal of curiosity because I was driven by this idea of, wow, I know how to do this instinctually but yet I’m going to have to learn how to build a program, to build a website, to market myself, to meet new people, to learn about branding, marketing. I began filming myself before people were really making online video classes. I was really pioneering that. It was a lot of hustle, a lot of heart but a lot of humility because I had to really find out information, I had to study.
It was a whole new world which I actually did in parallel to my acting career because it wasn’t like I just had this epiphany, started this new thing. I was still acting, that’s really how I made my living. It was until the consulting and the teaching, that took up so much of my time. I had to really do a dance with my agents, who were like, “Excuse me, what are you doing and why aren’t you available?” There was a crossover.
I love what you said, that curiosity and tenacity are a powerful combination. We’re going to tweet that out from show. That’s a great takeaway. I love that because you need to have both. You can’t just be curious or you’ll, “Okay, but then now, this is hard. I’m stopping.” If you just have tenacity but you don’t have curiosity to keep learning, you probably get bored and stop. The combination is really great.
[Tweet “Confidence And Presence: Curiosity and tenacity are a powerful combination”]
Before the show, we were talking about the difference between confidence and arrogance. As everybody knows who listens to The Successful Pitch podcast, you have to come across as someone who is confident because investors want to feel confident in giving their money to someone who could execute the idea. They really invest in the team. Let’s talk about your perceptions and definitions of confidence versus arrogance.
I love this idea because sure, as a culture, we get that confidence basically says, you’re wearing this billboard, this fake pretend billboard, energetic billboard that says, “Yes. Yes to life. Yes to meeting people. Yes to pursuing your dreams.” Yet, what really is that? For me, this idea that we have, this light that’s inside of us, it’s something that everybody is born with. It’s not like you have to go get it or someone’s going to give it to you. You have all of the magnificence inside of you.
Most of the time, we block it because of fear. We don’t think that we have the right thing to say, or we don’t have the right connections, or the right knowledge, or the right fill in the blank. We block that. But the knowledge and the light is inside of us. When we can release some of that fear, we naturally let that light shine. That’s what I call unlocking your 1000 watt presence. It’s not so that you can go into the room and blind everybody like, “I’m so great!” No, it’s more of just this quiet confidence.
[Tweet “Confidence And Presence: You have all of the magnificence inside of you.”]
Now, if you are someone who is pitching an idea, you’re just talking about an idea, you’re connected to this idea. Again, it’s not because you want everybody to love it immediately. It’s this idea that you know why, you know inside, why is this idea important? Why is it going to serve people? Why is it going to be successful? What is your why? When you are connected to that, you are in service to it as you’re meeting people. Ironically, it’s not about you anymore. It’s about this thing that’s coming through you in service to others.
Part of our fear, I think, kicks in when we’re like, “Do they like me? Am I going to get this money?” You’re so self-absorbed, so in your head, you’re not present with the people in the room is what I hear you saying.
That’s absolutely correct. Let’s just take something. I think perhaps women can relate to this more than men. This idea of, “I don’t know if I’m wearing the right thing.” You’ll sit there and go in your closet and you’ll try to figure it out, “What’s the appropriate thing to wear?” Forgive me, maybe men have this feeling as well. You spend all this time. Think about it John, do you really pay attention to what other people are wearing, really? Do you really genuinely notice?
Only if it’s really one way or the other, if it’s really like, “Oh God, you’re wearing shorts to a business meeting?” Or you’re so outrageously dressed, unless you’re a creative artist, that’s not appropriate. I do think there is a whole thoughtfulness that goes into deciding who you are as a brand and having your clothes reflect and your culture.
I totally agree with you. I’m talking about on an everyday basis.
We’re too busy with our own stuff.
Exactly, that’s my whole point. When you have the habit of having a habitual internal reflection, a inner critic narrative going on in your head, you’re blocking yourself from delivering your gift, from being able to share you why, to be able to connect with people and be present. The truth is, most people are consumed with the inner dialogue that’s in their head or their to-do list or what they’re going to do in the future, where they just came from.
When you can think about showing up in life and being able to be present and communicate your light or just let your light shine in front of someone, then there is the flow. That’s the thing that makes people stop and pay attention to you. That’s what’s pretty amazing. I’ll tell you, I have a funny story, speaking about the power of why.
Confidence And Presence: Be present and communicate your light or just let your light shine in front of someone.
Simon Sinek of course wrote the book Start with Why. I had the privilege, I think it was in 2013, I went to a Marie Forleo’s live event which she had. I think it’s actually called Rich, Happy and Hot, which is kind of a fun. I actually think that’s what it’s called. Anyway, it was in New York City. The morning before it took place, I was at a little coffee shop in the Meatpacking District in New York, which sounds gross but it’s actually very trendy right now.
I saw Simon Sinek sitting with a bunch of people and I just kept on being drawn to his energy and, “Should I say something to him? Should I not?” In that moment, I said, “No, I’m just going to let him … He’s having a business meeting.” Didn’t quite realize that he was the guest speaker at this event. I see him on stage, he absolutely blows my mind, he’s just a wonderful speaker.
Afterwards, I’m like, “I absolutely must speak with him.” I find him afterward. The most remarkable thing, when we connected afterward, he had this ability, despite the fact that so many people wanted to talk to him afterward, when he was standing in front of you, he was so present. He was just there.
He wasn’t worried about other people.”I’m taking this moment and I’m looking at you and listening to you.” That whole message of why is so important because investors want to know what’s the why behind your why doing this startup. It can’t just be to make money. You have to be personally passionate about it. Whether you experienced your own frustration or own pain of something that you’re trying to solve. It has to be a bigger purpose than just, “I want to make a lot of money.” Because that’s what keeps you motivated during the tough times.
Exactly. When I met Simon, he gave me this medallion. He literally put a medallion in my hand that looks like a bull’s eye that says, “Why?” When he put it in my hand and closed it around this medallion, I understood the passion that he has for his work. Because it was as if I got the message of my why matters. It’s up to you to bring it into the world. I say that because whatever your business is, now, I’m again, pivoting because I, in addition to doing my business, I’m also building this physical product.
[Tweet “Confidence And Presence: Your why matters.”]
I am, just like many of the people that you teach, on the cusp of sharing it with the world, pitching it in front of people. I’ve already began pitching to people. It was this idea that I even viscerally felt from Simon, which was, my why matters. Even though it is a grand vision, it is up to me to voice it, to find the courage to voice it. Again, it’s that borderline thing. There’s a humility that comes with that, honoring it, allowing this thing to come through me. Not, “Oh my goodness, I’m the biggest smarty pants girl in the universe because I came up with this thing.” No. It’s through me, it’s through me.
What a great example of branding. He’s passionate enough to have a medallion to give to people as a keepsake of who he is but also then it inspires them to live his message. It’s so smart on so many levels. I’m telling you, if you do something like that in a pitch meeting and can give an investor something to remember you by, because they hear so many pitches and your story has to be memorable. If you give them something besides, “Here’s my PowerPoint deck print out as a leave behind,” that is right on brand like that, it really sets you apart.
Let’s get back a little bit to confidence versus arrogance, because I think it’s really important to flush that out just a tad more because most people feel it’s one or the other. Being coachable is one of the key things that investors look for. If you’re not coachable because you’re arrogant and think you know everything, the investors aren’t interested because they want you to take their ideas sometimes and decide whether they work or not. It’s that fine line that you still have to be a leader but coachable, but not be so easily influenced that you’re just constantly changing your strategy all the time. It’s really challenging, I think, for people the figure out, “How do I do that?”
I think that’s a great point. I was having a really interesting conversation with Judy Robinett earlier this week. One sentence that I shared with her, which was, “I know what I know but I also know what I don’t know.” What I don’t know, I’m going to go get very deeply curious about and go seek those answers. Now, I’m not saying you use those words in a pitch, but it’s the energy of humility that I think helps fuel confidence. Before you go into that pitch meeting, you want to be able to articulate certainly what you have done to build this idea, to flush it out, to cover all of your bases. You want to be incredibly prepared. But there is also this energy or humility that must be present, because when you are overly confident, that does come across as arrogant. Arrogance, I think, is really is the mask of fear.
[Tweet “Confidence And Presence: Arrogance is the mask of fear.”]
That’s great. We’re going to tweet that out. Arrogance is the mask of fear. Have you said that before? It’s great.
No, I just said it right now.
I love it. Heard it here first.
Yay. The question that comes to my mind is, how do you know the difference? I think someone who is humble listens, is a great listener. I think someone who is humble speaks with warmth and generosity. I think someone who is humble walks into a room and connects with people. I believe that your pitch begins when you leave your house and you’re driving to your pitch meeting. There is an energy there that by the time that you show up, your focus needs to be on the individuals in the room, the people. In terms of just a warm handshake, looking someone in the eye, being lighthearted, being genuinely enthusiastic. That’s a warm energy. It’s very hard to be arrogant when you’re coming from that warm positive place.
I love what you said so much. We’ve never had anybody quite articulate it like that. It’s so great. Humble people listen, show warmth, show generosity and have a genuine human connection. When you do that, folks, you don’t have to worry about coming across as arrogant and you will come across as confident. Fantastic. Really, really great stuff. Let’s talk about your why behind your why. Because stories are so great as an example for people to go, “Okay, I understand I have to have a why behind my why.” If you tell us your why behind your why of your new product and describe how you got inspired by it and what it is.
Absolutely. In my work, what I discovered was there’s some energy that’s inside of us. I talked about it before, this 1000 watt presence. I would go in with CEOs, I would go in with their teams. I would talk about this and I would give them some experiences. But a lot of times people would not really get this idea that what they see, what they imagine, they can achieve for themselves. This sounds a little esoteric, but what I discovered was maybe I could create an experience for people to let them have something that they physically do to help them achieve what they want in life. Because what I realized in my coaching was it wasn’t just about communication and confidence. It was giving people the tools to have them feel confident that they can get what they want.
Confidence And Presence: In my work, what I discovered was there’s some energy that’s inside of us.
My community over at AlexaFischer.com, my students who take my online courses, they’re on the cusp of greatness. These are my people. This is what I discovered after five years of doing this. Anyone who finds my work, it’s because they know they’re capable of more but they need just a little guidance to get them there.
One day, I kid you not, in the shower, because I don’t know about you, but all great ideas come in the shower. I literally had a complete vision of this product that I was to create. It was to be called Wishbeads. Wishbeads, without going into too much detail, is a bracelet making kit that stems from the idea of the law of attraction. Meaning, when you pause your busy, busy life to really see a moment in time where your wish has come true, that’s the first step of Wishbeads, and then you write it down, you anchor it with language, you physically write down what you saw in delicious detail and you do that on paper that I include then you turn that paper into paper beads, wear it on your wrist. It inspires you to see your wish. It inspires you to keep it top of mind, it inspires you to take action towards your wish.
In this kit, I include a little 21 day action journal to get people to train their minds, to see signs, coincidences, to be taking small decisive steps toward their wish. That literally helps make that wish come true. John, the crazy thing is this thing works. It works crazy, it works really, really well.
I’m a believer. I know that whatever we focus on, we get more of.
Exactly, it’s the law of attraction.
What you’ve done here is you’ve given people a tool to become aware and then literally make your own bead out of paper and then ground that energy into something that you’re wearing, so you’re tapping into all of the senses. I think it’s really great. If I maybe so bold, my guess is the why behind your why Alexa, is your whole intent is to transform people’s lives and you realize that this is the tool to do so. Would that be a good guess?
Absolutely. I’ll tell you, it also stemmed from a conversation with too many CEOs that I was working with. Eventually there’d be this moment where they’d say, “Is there any way that you could talk to my daughter? Is there some way that you could talk to my son?” I said to myself, “I must bring this to young people. I must find a way to work with young people, to give them this idea that look, life is tricky. We didn’t come here for this fun, easy breezy ride. We actually came here to learn something. Yet, the obstacles don’t have to be these barriers in your life. Your obstacles are your greatest teachers.
[Tweet “Confidence And Presence: Your obstacles are your greatest teachers.”]
We can embrace the challenge but also hold the wish, hold the dream and pursue what you want. I have a very big vision of giving people a tool of personal empowerment, helping them achieve their goals, having a phenomenal experience along the way of bringing people together, women together in something I call Wish Circles. It’s been a wild ride to learn how to build a product from scratch. This has been a passion project for about two years in the making. Literally, as I’m talking to you, I’m on the cusp of launching a Kickstarter campaign, which is really a way for me to just get a lot of eyeballs on this all at one time. Then I have a very comprehensive marketing strategy after that.
Fantastic. I know that that’s going to be something we’re all going to be supporting and looking for, because with your tenacity and curiosity, you’re going to transform the world. Before I let you go Alexa, is there a book that you would like to recommend that’s either helped in business or life, whatever, that you think would be great for the listeners?
The First Key; How to Remove Subconscious Sabotage
I do. There is a woman that have collaborated with for years. We have an online course together. Her name is Dr. Daphna Slonim. She’s a psychiatrist and she wrote a book called The First Key; How to Remove Subconscious Sabotage. She collaborated with me years ago to help her do a DVD series to promote her own book. I ended up doing her work, which is based on a lot of energy, psychology techniques. I ended up doing that work. I kid you not, I believe it was one of the reasons why I had my a-ha moment on the set of Bones, was because something energetically lifted in front of me.
Once I removed my subconscious blocks, which look, let’s face it, everybody has subconscious blocks because we get crazy mixed messages in this lifetime. It was very amazing. Doing the technique with her, just to learn it, I did remove subconscious blocks I had to happiness, to success, to career fulfillment. I will tell you, things started showing up more effortlessly in my own life. I really strongly recommend this book. You may not have any experience with energy psychology but she certainly walks you through it and gives you techniques to do them yourself. It’s a remarkable publication.
I highly encourage everyone to get that. We’ll put it in the show notes. The whole mindfulness concept is so big in Silicon Valley with all the successful founders. If you want to get on that path, this is a great tool to get there. Alexa, how can people get more of you? What’s your Twitter handle and all that good stuff?
My Twitter handle is @1000WattAlexa. You can also find me on my website at AlexaFischer.com. You can also find me on Facebook and you can also check out Wishbeads at Wishbeads.com.
Nice. Again, thank you. It’s been a great episode. You’ve given us so many great takeaways. I think my favorite is arrogance is the mask of fear. Alexa, thanks for helping us remove that mask. We can’t wait to watch you continue to soar.
Thank you, John. It’s been a pleasure to speak with you. I’m actually learning so much from your podcast. Thank you for the work that you do. I will certainly put it to good use.
You’re welcome. Thanks again.
Links Mentioned
J Robinett Enterprises
John Livesay Funding Strategist
Crack The Funding Code!
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