Unicorn Leaders

In episode 18,  Jonah Midanik shares his journey and experience in a growth mindset of recognizing that ‘what got you here won’t get you there. He has been lucky enough to have seen the startup journey from a variety of perspectives: as a successful bootstrapped founder/CEO, having helped launch new corporate divisions at BigCo, and as the founder/CEO of Limelight, a Venture backed company.  Jonah currently spends his time helping companies grow with Forum Ventures as the COO and General Partner. 

Jonah shares a crucial tip in the discussion around ‘what got you here won’t get you there’. The tip for every founder or leader involves 3 key steps:

• Conduct an honest self-assessment. Asking yourself what you’re struggling with, what does the company need from you right now,  where I need to go? Identify the gaps in the stage. 
• Approach your peers, mentors, founders, etc. Ask what they think you are really good at vs not great at. Write all this down.
• Finally, review your notes and ask if you can do this, or if you event want to do this. If it’s absolutely yes, then you will find the resources that will get you there. 

Jeanette Dorazio, CEO of Leadpages, a no-code website and landing page builder. She has had various executive-level positions at leading organizations, including Oracle, 8thBridge, Verifone, and Solera. Jeanette’s passion comes from breaking down barriers and championing the inclusion and success of women in STEM fields as female leaders in tech.

In episode 17, Jeanette lays out how to reach the next level of your leadership career. She shares 3 lessons gained through her journey: knowing what is happening in the market, which she calls “outside in” because “nothing important happens in the office,” listening first and understanding all sides before communicating, and finally, understanding how to interpret data.

Her main piece of advice is to lean into your strength no matter what the judgements might be. With this advice, you will succeed in reaching the next level of your leadership journey.

On this episode we look at organizational systems and how to think when designing the organizational structure. Realizing that it should not be designed from a people centric place but rather around the needs and direction of your business. It’s important to be mindful when you do design around people and whether it is sustainable long term. 

Krista shares the top two reasons to consider when looking to expand a team.  First, think about whether the growth is significant and if in fact, a talent acquisition specialist becomes a specialty that is needed. Second, you reach a point and realize that the evolution of your organization and the complexity of products and solutions is growing. 

Some trends to look forward to: The skillsets for managers are looking very different, we promote people into roles and the manager role is the one they’re least prepared for while adding new skills on top of that.

Kyle Racki, the co-founder and CEO of Proposify, Kyle helps thousands of businesses remove the bottleneck of proposals and get more visibility into the close. 

In true serial entrepreneur form, Kyle also co-host his own podcast, The Racki and Symes Podcast, where he discusses ideas and strategies to push through growth.

Kyle got his start in marketing and design, and ran a digital agency for over five years before selling it and starting Proposify.

Since then he’s amassed a wealth of experience and lessons that he shares with us in this episode.

In episode 15, Kyle lays out the framework of the job of a CEO and some of the important pieces they’re faced with including: creating vision and auditing values, building out the executive team (title politics are real), hiring leadership contextually, having difficult conversations and holding people accountable.

He even offers a tool to conceptualize cash concerns that are big on the mind during periods of recession.


Listen to the full episode to hear more from Kyle!

Natalie Furness, CEO of RevOps Automated and Revenue Operations Consultant shares her journey and learnings along the way onto remote work and falling into the world of operations.

She speaks of finding your people through value alignment for both the work you do and the work environment you prefer. Though she’s the biggest remote work proponent, she acknowledges that its’ not for everyone and a reshuffling can and should naturally occur for the best possible match.

She encourages remote individuals not to lose sight of their personalities and not allow slack only to be a platform for work. Instead, she reminds us to use it to continue fostering social bonds as we would in person, and also continue to empower others to check in with one another and release the pressure off yourself as a leader for the need to control everything. 

One of her main pieces of advice is to lead with empathy and understand the challenges of remote work to then better help those you lead.

Chris Williams, former VP of HR at Microsoft has over 40 years of experience building and leading teams.

Through his journey, starting from installing car stereos and while being pulled into firing employees because of his people skills, to eventually transitioning to a computer science and going on to start a consulting business before selling it to Fox Pro before eventually starting his work with Microsoft. At Microsoft he worked in product before stumbling into HR and eventually becoming VP of HR and responsible for 32,000 employees.

Through it all, he’s seen his share of bad leadership and what makes teams succeed and fail as he noticed a common denominator to these failures and successes. Having a clear and crisp vision. 

He shares his advice on how to discern whether your team or organization may be struggling with vision too, and how to re-engage your vision with a clear direction and destination, and something that is active, not passive.

Chris also highlights the importance of trust between team members as a contributing factor to success. Trust that is fostered by going through hard things together which are often motivated by the vision.

Besides his passion for vision Chris helps hone into how to elevate from good to great leadership through personalized understanding of individual differences.

Listen to this episode to hear Chris and all his stories! 

Florent Schmahl, Chief of Staff of highly purposeful agtech company, Growcer, shares his journey and learnings along the way as he shifted his work from being focused on developing hard skills to now pursuing purposeful work.

Over the years he’s has time to gather his insights on finding the work that drives you and how important it is in today’s labour market pressures.

Despite this, Florent’s advice releases that pressure from the concept of pursuing purpose and instead reframing it as a journey.

He encourages instead to explore of what drives people in their work rather than trying to answer existential questions of a singular life purpose.

In this episode Florent helps translate these questions into a team setting and how to find that drive if your place of work doesn’t feel like it has the most impact in the most pressing of issues.

His main piece of advice is focusing on problems instead of tormenting with questions of passion. 

Listen to the episode to hear to the rest of Florent’s insights!

Today we have Shawna Stewart on the podcast, VP of People and Operations at Railz Financial. Shawna is truly a people-focused leader, she has extensive background in psychology and organizational behaviour and experience involving performance management, full scope operational effectiveness, succession planning, employee engagement and talent development. 

I’m so excited for you to listen to her episode because this was one packed full of with incredible insights, the common realities of today’s labour landscape and more. Not to mention Shawna shares her personal people-first approach and how that has helped her ability to deliver and collaboratively support her employees and together elevate organizations.

Laura Mindorff is the brilliant COO at Wicket. Laura has developed years of experience under her belt and shares her very tactical advice on how to create effective culture through things like rituals, culture champions, and what metrics to watch out for to check-in on your progress.

I’m so happy to bring you this conversation because of Laura’s purposeful and relentless approach to constantly prioritizing culture and fostering relationships in her own team and how you can borrow her practices to do the same.

When things pile up for leaders, it’s easy to push things that facilitate healthy and positive culture by the wayside. But this episode inspired me on the importance to stay consistent, because that basis, that foundation is also the springboard for good work. For impactful work. For employee happiness. Give it a listen and share your ways on how you work to create a positive culture at work.

In episode 9,  Julia gives us insight into how she uses her humane recruiting approach to create a reputable employment brand that plays big dividends both inside and outside the company.

She offers actionable tips on how to initiate trust on a team, how to lead the recruitment process to attract candidates with best practices, and how to show up in with an effective employer brand no matter the labour market conditions.

Her main piece of advice is to lead the recruitment process in a humane way as at the end of the day - all candidates are people first.

Tune in to hear all about how Julia’s experience and advice can help you improve your recruitment practices!