Book Review
According to executive coach Alisa Cohn who is the author of the new book From Start-Up to Grown-Up, every start-up founder feels overwhelmed and uncertain at various times. The key to managing the relentless turmoil of a start-up is learning to manage yourself.
From Start-Up to Grown-Up by Alisa Cohn gives you, the founder and CEO of a great start-up, the knowledge and experience she has gained in her role as an executive coach, helping companies such as Etsy, Foursquare, InVision and The Wirecutter become headline names. Growth of your company begins with growth within you. The book provides you with effective and practical ways of maximizing your strengths, defusing your triggers, controlling your self-doubt and building on your motivators. With these self-management tools, you can then turn your attention to managing your team by ensuring the flow of communication and finding the joy of delegation and the soul in meetings. Finally, you gain practical tools for managing the company and ensuring overall effectiveness of your team and strategy, using specific scripts you need to have delicate or difficult conversations. Filled with stories drawn from the author's experience, From Start-Up to Grown-Up helps you build a company with a set of core values that everybody lives by and where everyone shares a vision of where the company is going and how to get there.
Author Quotes
You started out with a dream to build a company, to create something significant, to maybe change the world.
Now you lead a growing startup. You have constant decisions to make with no easy answers.
Start asking the right questions, build better relationships, and get more of what you want!
About the author
Named the Top Startup Coach in the World at the Thinkers50/Marshall Goldsmith Global Coaches Awards in London, Alisa Cohn has been coaching startup founders to grow into world-class CEOs for nearly 20 years. She is the author of From Start-Up to Grown-Up, published by Kogan Page. A onetime startup CFO, strategy consultant, and current angel investor and advisor, she was named the number one “Global Guru” of startups in 2021, and has worked with startup companies such as Venmo, Etsy, DraftKings, The Wirecutter, Mack Weldon, and Tory Burch. She has also coached CEOs and C-Suite executives at enterprise clients such as Dell, Hitachi, Sony, IBM, Google, Microsoft, Bloomberg, The New York Times, and Calvin Klein. Marshall Goldsmith selected Alisa as one of his Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches – a gathering of the top coaches in the world – and Inc named Alisa one of the top 100 leadership speakers, and also been named one of the top voices of thought leadership by PeopleHum for 2021. Alisa is a guest lecturer at Harvard and Cornell Universities, Henley Business School and the Naval War College. She is the executive coach for Runway–the incubator at Cornell NYC Tech that helps post-docs commercialize their technology and build companies. She serves on the board of the Cornell Advisory Council. She has coached public and political figures including the former Supreme Court Chief Justice of Sri Lanka and the first female minister in the transitional government of Afghanistan. Her articles have appeared in HBR, Forbes, and Inc and she has been featured as an expert on Bloomberg TV, the BBC World News and in the New York Times. A recovering CPA, she is also a Broadway investor in productions which have won two Tony Awards and is prone to burst into song at the slightest provocation.
Why LoA loves it….
It is always a tough journey, going from the early days as a startup, to becoming a sustainable business that is on an exciting growth path. Not everyone has their mentor by their side, or great examples to follow of others who have blazed a trail before them. So Alisa Cohn’s new book can help to fill in some of the gaps, to provide useful and frank advice, and importantly provide a framework to help navigate the path to achieving that growth. This is a great read for any entrepreneur who has their mind set on building a successful business that can go the distance. — Melanie Hawken, founder & ceo, Lionesses of Africa