It’s not easy to describe what I do, I don’t have a label for it: product & growth advisor to startups, executive & performance coach won't cover it, they exist in the thousands and if you are looking for that, I won’t be able to help you.
On the one side, I'm working with high growth startups on product and growth strategy which is self-explanatory 📈.
On coaching side of what I do, the best word I could find for what I help founders, CEOs and pro-athletes experience is a state the Japanese call Mushin 無心. Mushin is achieved when a person's mind is free from involuntary thoughts.
Over the last 15 years, I've spent every waking minute outside of work exploring this state and pursuing many avenues that lead nowhere, including the varoius schools of meditation and yoga. I'm now ready to share with others how to access this state whenever they need it most and hint: it won't be about meditation or yoga.
You see, reaching peak of performance in any domain is usually not about doing more (effort) or doing less, but eliminating the very idea of being the doer. When the mind is not in the way, fear and striving are not in the way, when those are gone peak performance and success are allowed to happen, not as a goal, but as a byproduct.
We will go there through a careful inquiry, a dance if you will. Instead of giving you tasks, how-to's and formulas, we will arrive through an understanding, not an intellectual understanding, but an insight.
In my work I help rare individuals that have ambition, and often have it all, to find the thing they've been looking for through pursuing successes and accolades. There’s nothing wrong with those, to the one who finds the thing they’re really looking for they happen, but not by means of a direct pursuit but instead as a byproduct of insight.
I typically start with athletes who are getting used to the pressure of becoming a pro or athletes who have a high potential for making pro, but who get in their own way. Our goal is to get them to move into the top 0.1% in their field.For startups, I focus mainly after Series A funding and our goal is to take it all the way to IPO or acquisition.
In the past, I’ve been interviewed and quoted in lectures and case studies at Harvard Business School, UC Berkeley Haas School of Business and media outlets such as TechCrunch (TC), Wall Street Journal (WSJ) and The Next Web (TNW).
Random facts about me:
To determine if there's a mutual fit, email me: coach@chopwoodcarrywater.org
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