In this episode of Startup Success, we welcome Arielle Lechner, Executive Coach and Founder of NewPo, to discuss the crucial role of decision-making and leadership in early-stage startups. Arielle, a mentor for TechStars and former startup operator, shares insights on how founders can move faster, avoid burnout, and create a thriving company culture.
We dive into how founders can distinguish between upstream and downstream problems, the power of thinking like a scientist when iterating, and Arielle’s Lift and Thrust model for balancing team motivation and momentum.
Tune in to learn how to:
- Stop wasting time on the wrong issues and focus on the upstream problems
- Create a culture that propels your team forward even in difficult times
- Move away from the mindset and assumptions that limit your startup’s potential to scale
Don’t miss this episode packed with actionable takeaways on how to successfully navigate the hard decisions and complex challenges that come with leading a startup.
This discussion with Arielle Lechner of NewPo comes from our show Startup Success. Browse all Burkland podcasts and subscribe to the show on Apple podcasts.
Intro 00:01
Welcome to Startup Success, the podcast for startup founders and investors. Here, you’ll find stories of success from others in the trenches as they work to scale some of the fastest growing startups in the world, stories that will help you in your own journey. Startup Success starts now.
Kate 00:18
Welcome to Startup Success. Today we have Arielle Lechner, who is the Executive Coach and Founder of NewPo. I’m so excited to have Arielle, because we haven’t had an executive coach on for a while, and Arielle has a lot of experience with startup founders. She’s even a mentor for TechStars, so this is going to be a good conversation. Welcome Arielle.
Arielle Lechner 00:43
Thanks for having me, Kate.
Kate 00:45
We’re excited you’re here. Tell us a little bit about your work and NewPo and how you work with clients as an executive coach, just kind of to set the stage, and then we’ll get into some areas where you can help the founders listening.
Arielle Lechner 00:59
So I’m an executive coach, and I work mostly with CEOs, but not exclusively. And you know, originally my business was, I was operating just under my name. NewPo is actually a rebrand initiative that I did in 2022. It’s short for new possibilities, which is at the crux of what I really think I’m doing with my client work. So it’s really about helping leaders, CEOs see a new realm of possibilities, and from that place they have more optionality, are able to make more aligned and better decisions and really create a future of their choosing, if you will, both from a personal standpoint and a professional one, with their companies.
Kate 01:43
Excellent. It sounds like inspiring work.
Arielle Lechner 01:45
Yeah, I love what I do.
Kate 01:47
I bet that’s great. So through your experiences, you worked in several startups right as you were building your career,
Arielle Lechner 01:56
Yes, so I didn’t start out doing this well. I actually started out, I’m from Montreal, Canada originally, and I started out working in politics in Ottawa, and very quickly learned it wasn’t for me. Things just, you know, there’s a lot of great things government does, but it also moves quite slowly. So I pretty much decided I wanted to work in tech and work in marketing. And at the time, this was 2013 I felt San Francisco was the best place to be, and so I moved there. I started a startup with two other people. We raised a bit of funding, we got some publicity. We got, you know, several 1000 downloads. It was a social media app at the time, but really no revenue model, you know. We didn’t know what we were doing. And I was young. I was still in my early 20s. But that got my foot in the door with working, we ended up shutting it down, but that got my foot in the door working with other startups. And I, pretty much, from then, had been working in B2B, mostly B2B SaaS companies. I spent a bit of time in Web3, but mostly it’s been B2B SaaS. Either working in the startups themselves or or from like a consulting standpoint. So supporting startups that way, really, with go-to-market strategies, their positioning, messaging, really taking products to market. And you know, when I decided to pivot into coaching, that’s really my network was over the last decade, built in tech, and so that’s really how I’m mostly coaching leaders in tech.
Kate 03:17
That’s great. I love it. I love how your background really lends nicely to that. So one of the things we hear on this show a lot from successful founders is the role culture played in their startup. And I think when I was first doing this show, you know, it was all about product-market-fit and pricing and everything. And there’s been this resurgence, like a theme lately about how building a strong culture really helped. You know, I recently had a founder of Segment on who had one of the, you know, greatest acquisitions we all point to, and he talked a lot about the culture he built. I want to talk to you about that kind of the work you do with your clients around culture.
Arielle Lechner 04:07
Yeah, so culture is really, you know, it’s like the water you’re swimming in at work, if you will. And especially, I tend to work with earlier stage companies, so like, let’s say seed stage to series A, so you’re still kind of sort of tight knit. And really, at that early stage, I like to think, like, culture is in some ways a recipe. And like, what kind of recipe are you trying to make? And with every employee or person you add, you’re adding a new ingredient. How is that changing the recipe? So always something, I kind of, it’s like a an analogy I always like to share with clients. And really, I think, in essence, what I think about from culture is, how can you create a culture that enables people to do their best work? And from what I’ve seen. And in my experience, you need really two things to create a culture that enables people to do their best work. And this is, I call this like a lift and thrust model. And this is from a mentor of mine, Robert Ellis, who has now passed, but he kind of coined this, and it’s creating a culture where there is lift. So think things that make you excited to go to work on Monday, like get out of bed. What’s the stuff that’s making you feel good about your company, your role, the work you’re doing? And then you also need thrust. So what are the things at work in the company that are propelling you forward? And you need both of those things, right? You need to feel good, and, you know, psychological safety, this and that, to do well. But you also need to feel like you’re actually doing things and learning new skills and shipping things, and, you know, pushing your career forward. One without the other, actually doesn’t work, right? If you only have a feel good culture where no one’s actually doing important, meaningful work, your high performers are going to leave because they’re going to get bored. If you have a culture that only has a lot of thrust, right? You’re moving really quickly, you’re delivering a lot of stuff, but people hate being there. That’s really, I think, what leads to a burnout type of culture. And people will also leave. So really kind of thinking about well, and I even love this question, whether you’re asking your leadership team, your direct reports, like, you know, what are the things that are creating lift for you right now at work? What are the things that are creating thrust, but also, what are some things that are creating weight? So if lift is up, weight is down – what are things that are weighing you down, making you not excited, or whatever the negative emotion is. What’s creating drag, so the opposite of thrust, like, what’s holding you back right now? Like, do you not have the tools you need, the resources, right? If you’re running a department and you have certain goals, but you know, we’ve restricted budget, like, we want to hear about that. It’s a really good way to just kind of at a high level, check in with a person or a team or an entire company about where do we land right now on this graph, and what can we do to maybe move us more to the right and up for more lift?
Kate 07:14
I like that for founders listening first, starting with your analogy, because it shows the importance of hiring, right, because adding to that recipe. But then that balance you talked about, with weight versus lift and thrust, and I yeah, when you were talking, I was just reminded of early days in my 20s working at startups that I didn’t have that balance. So, you know.
Arielle Lechner 07:41
Yeah, and I don’t know, I feel you on that as well. I don’t know that we always have the wisdom in our 20s to really recognize. Maybe it’s for the best.
Kate 07:51
Yeah, okay. Well, I think that’s great advice on how to look at culture and what to strive for. When we spoke before, you also talked about like, how you work with clients on moving faster. And that’s something that we hear a lot from startup founders. They have to move so fast, they have to think through pivots, iterations. Talk us through around that.
Arielle Lechner 08:21
Sure. So yeah, startup, early stage startup, especially pre product-market-fit. One of the only when you’re still figuring things out and there’s a bunch of unknowns, one of the only kind of advantages you have is how quickly can you move. To take a step back, I guess this is also kind of the philosophy or framing I use in my coaching, which is no one knows anything for sure. Just because something worked for someone else or another company, this playbook worked there, doesn’t mean it’s going to work here. The only way to discover what’s true for you and your company is to run experiments. That’s the only way. Right? A hypothesis, you know, what’s the container of this experiment? What variables like high school science. And the rate at which you can run experiments and create tight feedback loops, increases your velocity of learning, which increases how quickly you get to the truth, which then increases your ability to, you know, either find product-market-fit or or scale, or whatever it is.
Kate 09:25
Yeah, no. So you’re kind of, you’re no, that’s helpful. You’re kind of equating it to like a scientist, right, going through that method. And I like that, because we had a successful founder on here who was a scientist. And she said that her background in, you know, testing really helped her in implementing things cross-organization, outside of even just testing the formula she was working on, but testing different approaches and pricing and all of that.
Arielle Lechner 10:03
I love to hear that. I think the other thing that’s coming to mind, too, though, I’d like to share, is oftentimes, especially, you know, when you’re a founder, a CEO, especially if you’re a solo founder or right, you’re on your own, and when an experiment, something doesn’t work out. It goes wrong, sub optimal results. Oftentimes, we have a habit as humans, of making that mean something about us, right? So the experiment didn’t work. The thing we were testing at the company failed. Therefore, I suck as a CEO, or I’m not good enough. You make it personal. You make it mean something about you. Whereas, I mean, I would be interested to ask her this question, but I would think a great scientist is running experiments their whole damn life. And when an experiment doesn’t go well, they don’t say, Oh, I’m a crappy scientist. They go, huh? Like, what about this, this didn’t work and let me, you know, tweak it and try it again next time. And they don’t make it mean anything about them. And I think creating a negative story around what a failed outcome means about you as a person, as a leader, slows you down, because you get caught up in this negative loop and ruminating and all kinds of things. And so if you can really get into this scientist headspace and really be objective about the experiments you’re running from what I’ve seen, you’re also it makes it a lot easier to move quicker, and you’re not getting caught up in the story.
Kate 11:26
I like that. I’m sure, like you said, she would look at it as like, what did I learn from this failed thing? And now, when you said that, I thought of like a great CEO I once worked for, and anytime there was a failure, that’s all he really looked at was just, what did we learn from this? What are we going to do differently, not doubling down on we had a failure, right? Like, ruminating, I think that’s part of the problem, right?
Arielle Lechner 11:53
Yeah. And I have to imagine, I mean, you let me know, but a CEO who thinks that way about failure, like, maybe doesn’t even consider it a failure. It’s well, what is the lesson here that to go back to culture, I think, creates a culture of lift, right? People aren’t scared to fail. You’re excited to try new things.
Kate 12:11
Great point. That’s a really good point. Do you find, getting to this culture and moving faster, that a lot of the clients you work with than the two kind of go hand in hand?
Kate 12:23
Meaning, like the experimentation and the culture, stuff?
Kate 12:26
The moving faster happens when you have a strong culture, right? Like, I’m guessing that you kind of need both, right?
Arielle Lechner 12:34
You do need both. Yeah, they feed into each other. It’s a bit like a chicken and egg thing.
Kate 12:40
Oh. Got it. Better way of saying it – feed into each other.
Arielle Lechner 12:45
Yes, they feed into each other. What I would, I guess, something I’ve also seen with clients is once, I mean, many people get, they resist running experiments because they’re nervous around well, what if I learned something bad or there’s some negative outcome? As soon as people we can do some work around, like unpacking that belief and reframing it, leaders, I’ve noticed, are able to move a lot faster, which then, you know, folks who are working for them feel like we’re as a company, moving faster. There’s more momentum, and it kind of feeds into each other.
Kate 13:22
Got it. That makes perfect sense, and I can see where that would really help propel us to start it forward through those difficult times. Makes a lot of sense, which gets me into another area I wanted to talk to you about, and that is problems. You had, you know, you talked to me about upstream versus downstream problems, and if you could just explain that to the audience, because I know everyone listening, as a founder, you encounter problems all day, every day, unfortunately.
Arielle Lechner 13:56
Yeah, and I didn’t come up with, like, upstream or downstream problems. I think it’s just in the vernacular. The way I always like to explain it is, you know, if you’re standing next to a river and you keep seeing kids drowning in the river, and you keep jumping in to save the kids, well, you can keep doing that, or you can walk upstream and see who keeps throwing kids in the river and punch them in the face. That would be solving the upstream problem. And I think a lot of times, especially with CEOs, as they move from, you know, an earlier stage company into a growth stage company, even when they raise their next round, there’s a lot more demands now on them, more things that need to happen. And so they really need to start thinking about, like, how do I prioritize? And oftentimes, yes, it’s about prioritizing, but I think it’s also like a problem solving and thinking challenge, which is of these things that I could try to solve, which are the ones that you know, if I solve this problem, the other problems would kind of just go away. How am I discerning which are like the root cause, the upstream problem, and which are the downstream kind of symptoms? And really, any CEO or leader who’s getting caught up in the downstream problems, in the symptoms, there’s only so long you can get away with that, and it’ll start showing up in other ways. So that’s really what I mean by that.
Kate Adams 15:32
It almost sounds, in a sense, like being a little more proactive, instead of reactive, like proactive, going out and finding those upstream problems, right?
Arielle Lechner 15:45
It’s being proactive. I think it’s also being curious and inquisitive. Like before you just react to, well, I need to jump in and solve this, really taking a step back and asking, Well, why is, you know, the way reactive is okay, fire pops up, okay, we need to put out the fire. If a fire keeps popping up the same fire, well, you got to ask yourself, Okay, how can I be proactive about this? How can I get ahead of this problem? And I think even taking a step further beyond proactive is, well, you know, if I’m trying to create this type of outcome or future, what strategic decisions do I need to make to kind of drive us there. So yes, it’s really about getting out of that reactive place, which, again, is hard for early stage companies, and I think hard generally, before you found product-market-fit, because there’s so much reacting – reacting to customers, reacting to changes in the market, reacting to whatever. You know, take what you took to market isn’t quite picking up. There’s so many things. So it’s not that being reactive is bad. We all need to put out fire sometimes. But being thoughtful around, you know, if the same fire keeps popping up, how do we, yeah, ask a different question.
Kate 17:01
I think that’s a really good clarification that you made that being reactive isn’t bad. It’s just, if it becomes a common thing, or you’re constantly just being reactive, taking a step back, right?
Arielle Lechner 17:16
Yeah, what do they say? It’s the dose that makes the poison, right? That’s what.
Kate 17:23
That makes sense. So do you work with clients a lot on strategies on how to do that because I’m sure their days get blown up every day.
Arielle Lechner 17:31
Yeah, I mean I wouldn’t call it strategy. I think it would be more so around getting curious, around what’s getting in the way of them being able to do that. Because I would argue that for a CEO or a leader, some of the most some of the highest value things you will do for your company is your thinking, right, which can be a bit tricky when you’re moving out of just being a founder. You’ve been doing everything yourself. Now moving into CEO, you’ve hired a team, and you might still get caught in that pattern of, well, if I’m not doing I’m not adding value. No, a lot of the time it needs to be, especially when you’re trying to do big strategic things, you need to spend more time thinking, which doesn’t necessarily have a tangible output all the time, but it’s very valuable. So I guess not so much, helping clients come up with strategies, but helping them figure out, like, what is getting in the way of you having, you know, a decent amount of time every week to think deeply. And, you know, it’s usually beliefs and mindset things around what they are able to ask for, what they think they can delegate, what is actually priority versus what’s not a priority. And it’s really just about kind of revisiting, you know, kind of what got you here won’t necessarily get you there. And how can we re-look at everything you used to be doing and seeing, you know, what, what could we remove from your plate?
Kate 18:53
I think that is so helpful what you just shared. Because I know just personally, as my team has grown, I found, like, my day is just reactive, moving so fast, and I literally have to schedule blocks, I wouldn’t call it thinking time, but just like time (like don’t bother me). Yes, exactly Yes, like that. (Don’t put a meeting on my calendar.) Yes, I have to do that otherwise, and that’s when, like, the ideas come and I can work on some of the bigger picture things and fix some problems. If I don’t have that time during a week, I can almost feel it at the end of the week. I think that’s a great call out.
Arielle Lechner 19:35
Yeah, my husband’s a CEO as well, and we have access to each other’s calendars for, like, child care purposes, and I’ll even see in his calendar, it’ll be like, no meetings / do not book for his whole company to see. Because people, if they see you’re open, will think, oh, I can, you know, if you have, like, an approachable culture, and people are easily, you know, connecting with the leadership team, they’ll throw time on your calendar. So you need to be really – that’s another thing too, if you historically haven’t been someone who can, you know, hold firm boundaries, or you struggle with saying no, or you, you know, want to be liked, people can sometimes compromise on some of these things. So it’s maybe another kind of downstream thing that comes up with clients when we’re trying to create that ability to have for them, to have more time to think strategically.
Kate 20:25
Really great call outs. You’ve shared so much. It’s been really helpful. We always wrap up the show with any closing advice for startup founders that you can share.
Arielle Lechner 20:27
Okay, I’m trying to think of something that maybe isn’t your typical thing. Let’s see. So I think what I know in my bones to be true, that I would recommend or advise startups is turn towards the difficult thing. Turn towards the thing you’ve been avoiding or putting off, whether it’s the pivot, the hard conversation letting someone go, the conversation with your board, whatever it is that you’re putting off that is exactly what needs your attention right now. And the sooner you can turn towards the discomfort again, back to this concept of the faster you’re going to learn what you need to learn, make happen, what you need to make happen and you’re going to move forward.
Kate 21:24
Wow, I love that. That is such excellent advice, because I find when I don’t do that, it hangs over you.
Arielle Lechner 21:33
Oh, it’s like a gray cloud. It sucks. And you just have anxiety around it.
Kate 21:36
Yes, you have anxiety, it sucks energy, you have worry about it. And then when you actually start to address it, you feel more in control. Do you know what I mean?
Arielle Lechner 21:48
You feel more in control, like you have taken control back. And not always, but oftentimes it’s not as bad as you thought it was going to be.
Kate 21:55
No, it usually isn’t. I and especially around, I hate to say, this firing people.
Arielle Lechner 22:02
I mean, no one likes it. I mean, maybe if you’re like a sicko, but I don’t think anyone enjoys doing that.
Kate 21:09
No and it’s one of those things, yes, you’re always like,I should have done this earlier. You see the ramifications of waiting and putting it off.
Arielle Lechner 22:18
Especially, again, every person adds an ingredient to the recipe. If the flavor of the recipe is starting to taste really bad. The sooner you can remove that ingredient, the better.
Kate 22:27
Great, great. Call out. This has been so helpful, I think, for founders listening, it’ll just give them, kind of some overarching ways to approach things a little differently, kind of get out of that rat race that we all find ourselves in what we’re just doing day after day. And you’re exhausted. For people listening that want to learn more about NewPo where do they go?
Arielle Lechner 22:53
They can go to NewPo.io, N, E, W, P, O dot io, or they could find me on LinkedIn. Ariel Lechner. And yeah, those are pretty much the two ways to connect with me.
Kate 23:03
Awesome. Thank you so much for being here. I really enjoyed the conversation. It resonated with me too.
Arielle Lechner 23:09
Thanks so much for having me Kate.
Intro 23:12
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