[upbeat music] Hey, it's Tristan again. Welcome back to the podcast.
I'm a coach who partners with founders and chiefs of staff to navigate company and career building with clarity and intention.
This year, as a chief of staff network fellow, I'll be guest hosting a few episodes and bringing on chiefs of staff from all around the world, and in particular from Europe and Asia.
Today's guest is the wonderful Lisa Sorgenfrei, and this is an episode about what life after being a chief of staff looks like and what exactly does it take to start betting on yourself.
Lisa went from building Capmo from the ground up for eight years, including as a chief of staff, to then branching out to begin her founder journey.
We talk about her life before, during, and after being a chief of staff, the loneliness, uncertainty, challenges, and excitement, and then we talk about her life as the founder of the Munich Play Collective and how being a chief of staff led her there.
I'm extremely grateful to Lisa for taking the time to share her journey and admire how courageous she has been to start betting on herself. Hope you enjoy it. Lisa, welcome to the podcast. How are you feeling today?
Thanks, Tristan. I'm feeling really well. It's good to see a familiar face. You know, we've known each other actually for a couple of years from the On Deck chief of staff cohort, I think in, like, twenty twenty-two?
One? Yeah. It has been a whole year, but it was really nice to follow your journey throughout as well. Well, thank you so much for making the time being on the pod.
I wanted to start off with a question of, for everyone listening, what is some useful context that could help us understand who you are, who is on the pod with us today? So, uh, yeah, my name is Lisa.
I'm a daughter of a Japanese mom and a German dad, born and raised in Germany, though.
And I've always have, like, these two different cultural backgrounds with me, which is, I also think what shaped me into who I am today. As for my career path, I never really had a straight line.
I never had a really straight career path. When I was young, I wanted to become an architect because I loved, like, really creative things. I loved beautiful buildings. I always wanted to become that.
But it's really hard to make a living as an architect and truly make money, and at that time it was really hard even to find a job as an architect.
So instead of that, I wanted to study civil engineering because that was kind of the closest that I can get with an engineering degree.
But as I lacked kind of the language part, I chose business engineering with focus on civil.
So really quite a generalist sort of study where you tap into law, business, macroeconomics, as well as civil stuff like mathematics, construction. It was a lot of fun.
But yeah, that was kind of my studies upbringing, which led me into starting in a software startup, in a construction software startup after my-- or even during my studies to build a construction software management platform together with the founders.
I was one of the first employees. Stayed there actually for eight years. Did different roles there. That's Capmo, right? Exactly. It's a German construction software company.
First was focused really much on defect management on construction, but yeah, as we grew, it became broader and broader, I would say.
What was it like to jump in in the early days with the company and kind of see it grow over eight years? It was a lot of fun.
So, you know, I started there as an intern, like I was in my studies, and it didn't really feel like working at a company.
Being an intern before in bigger companies, I knew what it was like to be kind of in a corporate world, and I really enjoyed the gap, being in a software company and a software startup, that it really didn't feel like working.
It felt like doing a fun project together with some friends. Yeah, we worked a lot, day and night sometimes, but, uh, it was just a lot of fun and didn't feel like work.
No, I mean, that's probably a good sign if it kind of all blends. Oh, [chuckles] in some ways, I guess maybe if it all blends together. Yeah, that's true. Tell us a bit about the different types of responsibilities.
You know, I can imagine being early in the company, you're probably doing a bit of everything. How did that change as the company grew, and how did the company do over the years as well?
So I started off in customer success. I was kind of the first customer success manager. When I started, the company was, like, two months old.
We just had the first customers, but nobody knew what construction was really about, and nobody really knew the processes of, of the customers, so I was hired as a customer success manager to actually onboard our customers and kind of use the software to really show people how it can be used in the processes.
That was my first role, and it was quite fun because I was new to the software world. I was learning really a lot and, you know, in that first year when we were just, like, ten people or so, you just do everything.
So we were writing content by ourselves. We were doing outbound sales, going on events.
And being the customer success manager, I was also helping in the product department, translating the user stories and the problems of our customers that I understood from sales conversations or, like, really customer conversations into user stories and understanding and unpacking the problems more.
I found that work to be really, really fascinating because it's super creative and you take a complex problem and you solve it by creating something out of nothing.
That was kind of the thing that really, really stuck with me and that I liked.
So I transitioned after a year into being the first product manager full-time and working in the product department.It was a lot of fun, super steep learning curve.
I had a lot of responsibility and autonomy, so I could run and just solve a lot of really cool problems. I guess in the early days of being the first product manager, what was that experience like?
What kind of problems were you working on, and what were the failures as well, I guess? In the very early days of the company, we really spent a lot of time also with our customers.
I was on a construction site so much, uh, just talking with our customers and showing them the product.
The product was quite buggy at that time because we had some offline functionality, and that was quite fun and quite interesting.
I would say the problems that we worked on mainly were, like, really customer problems because the team was so small that you don't need, like, processes, and you don't have that much, like, internal problems or challenges because everyone is just being crammed in a small room and working together on a mission.
So small teams have that, until a certain capacity or size, have that magic that it kind of just somehow works internally, and you can really purely focus on the external, on the customer problem.
Okay, so talking a lot to the customers in the early days and for you being the product manager, I mean, as you said, you were kind of on-site all the time. I guess as the company grew, how did the dynamics change?
Like, you can't really fit in a small room anymore. Yeah, exactly. We moved to, like, new offices and became much bigger, and we hired a second product manager who was also a lot of fun to work with. I learned a lot.
He was more experienced than me. I mean, I haven't done any product management before, so I was kind of a self-starter and needed to learn from also other people.
And when the other product manager came, we added a lot of processes because now with two teams, of course, we need to align much more and need to see that we don't break the code base by accident or so.
That's where I also understand, okay, now we're growing, you know, we're adding more layers, we're adding more processes.
And there in the beginning, I also learned a lot because I learned more about how a business then grows. But I love really steep learning curves.
I just love jumping into the deep water not knowing anything and just- [laughs]... figuring things out.
And as soon as the learning curve kind of starts to flatten, maybe it's a bad trait, sometimes it's a good trait, but I feel bored [laughs] and I need to have a new challenge.
And so I told the founders that I really need a new challenge. I feel like product management in that sense is not it. I want to understand the business more.
I want to understand more what it is like to really build a business and not what it is like to build a product only. And that was kind of the start of my transition into a chief of staff role, actually.
What was that conversation like when you kind of brought that up? How did the leadership team take that, and how did you then carve out the role? So the role didn't exist before in our company.
I was having more conversations with my manager, who was the CTO at that time, one of the co-founders, that I want to learn more, that I want to add more responsibility.
And at some point, I even considered leaving to have another, like, kind of learning curve because, of course, instead of being in the company and learning a new role, I could also do the role in another company and again learn a lot, even though product management was maybe not it, but I could maybe learn something.
Shortly before me really saying that I think I might quit, my boss called me someday and said, "Hey, you know what? I talked to the CEO," the other founder.
We were all friends at that time, so it was not like, "Oh, I talked to the CEO." [laughs] Yeah. It was more like I talked to him. I think he needs a chief of staff, and I didn't really know what a chief of staff is.
[laughs] So he had a friend who is a chief of staff. So he was like, "Hey, maybe talk to him to understand a bit more about the role and if it's something for you." Then I started talking to that person.
It really sounded awesome. It sounded like all I ever wanted, like understanding everything around the business, being really close to the CEO and understanding how to take these hard decisions for our company.
And then I talked also to the CEO, and that's how I ended up there. It sounds like, you know, some parts of getting to see the whole company as opposed to just working on one specific product does seem appealing.
Like, what else about the role was appealing for you, and to you, like, what is a chief of staff role? How would you define what it is? I think there's no such thing as, like, one chief of staff role.
Every chief of staff does something else, and, uh, it might be similar, but it always needs to fit the company and also the person that you're serving.
For me, the chief of staff role there was a lot about bringing structure into the company as a whole and by that, helping it grow.
And that was quite fascinating for me because I felt like because we're growing, we need more structure in the way, what kind of meetings do we actually do? How do we do strategy? How do we execute against that strategy?
How do we hold ourself accountable?
All of that, and it was really appealing to me to bring structure into this and also do the communication side of things to bring everybody along with that journey and doing that change management, if you will, within the company to bring that structure in.
I'm guessing also the fact that you were there since the early days as the company scaled as well, you also had a lot of support and buy-in from the leadership team because, as you said, you're all friends.
You were there since the early days.
One of the tricky things in conversations I've had, and also my personal experience, is that as the team scales, you have the-Core crew, let's say, that grew with the company from the very early days that, you know, those bonds are so different than the bonds that are formed after the thirtieth or hundredth hire.
What was it like for you to traverse and navigate, like, the company as it scaled, and what was that like? So I think I was really lucky being one of the first.
As you said, I had a bond with, like, the leadership team and everyone around. I wasn't coming from outside and saying, "Hey, I'm gonna change now everything how it works." [laughs] So that was easy for me, fortunately.
I felt like maybe just on the personal side as the company grew, people who were with me in the early days, of course, they also leave, and kind of the best friends that I had at that time left, like, one by one.
So that compared with being a chief of staff, which is quite a lonely role, at times felt really lonely, I would say. But in total, it was really interesting and really cool to see the company growing.
I would say I was one of the culture shapers. I think I really embodied the values of the company, and I took pride in really shaping the culture and bringing it into the company and into every conversation.
And it was really nice to see that while the company was growing, the culture was still sustaining and overall, like, the values were still lived, which was really, like, rewarding for me also as a chief of staff because as chief of staff you have another channel to also be a culture driver, right?
So that was a really good thing. What were those channels for you, and what sort of signs did you see that, you know, after eight years, like, those seeds were pretty much, let's say, the same seeds, I guess?
I would say three main channels. One is really during the recruiting process that I was also involved, especially in key hires in the peer interviews. And in the peer interviews, we would vet for culture fit.
So that was kind of one channel that I could work in. The second was during the onboarding.
We always did a kind of value workshop, so it was kind of a workshop for all the newbies, talking about the values and teaching them about the values, but also, like, interactively getting them to talk about a time or situation where they lived this value or where they lived this value internally or externally and-- or how do they feel about the value.
That second channel was really, really powerful, and I, I did it also after I transitioned out of the chief of staff role. I continued to do these workshops. And the third one was the all-hands meeting.
So once a week, thirty minutes, there was a meeting for everyone within the company, no laptops, just like what's new within the company, what's the state of the company in terms of numbers, and we always had a section about the culture.
It's like the Capmo of the week section, where one employee would praise another employee for living a certain value and telling about the situation where they lived the value, and then they would pass kind of the, the ball to the next person.
When I started as a chief of staff, I also changed what the content of the all-hands is, and I would say that was also a really big lever for me to really bring the culture into the company.
Yeah, I guess, you know, as like chiefs of staff, the most common description is like the glue that holds things together, right?
And I guess by having the agency through, I guess, like, the backing of the leadership team, then not only can you see the spots that maybe need some love [laughs] Yeah.
But then you also have, like, the mandate to be able to raise it or, you know, just act on it. And I can imagine being someone that was there from the early, early days, you have extra support in some ways, you know.
I've spoken to quite a few chiefs of staff that are in this phase of trying to get the backing from the leadership team because they've, you know, been, let's say, some of them have been promoted from founders associate role, some have been hired externally as a chief of staff into this role, but it's like coming into, like, an ant colony [laughs] an ant colony- [laughs]...that has, like, its own way of, of operating, you know.
And, like, there's very clear paths these ants are walking, and suddenly you're gonna choose a different path after it's been trodded on for [laughs], you know, for such a long time. Yeah.
I reckon it's a really hard challenge. I am fortunate enough to not having had that.
I had other challenges, I guess, but I was really fortunate to always have the backing of the leadership team and always had a bond already with the leadership team. Yeah.
So at the London Chief of Staff Network event that we had, that was at last year in November, we did, like, a little word cloud situation where we got everyone.
There was, like, sixty or seventy chiefs of staff in the room, and we asked the question, "What's one word you use to describe your role?" That sounds fun. Yeah.
[laughs] We had quite many words, but the one that came up is a word that you've used, which is lonely.
And then it was surprising for people to see that other people had, other chiefs of staff- [laughs]...had said that it was lonely. You know? So it was like, "Oh, you, you guys too? Oh, oh, damn."
[laughs] But that sounds like a good moment to realize that other people feel the same. [laughs] Yeah. What do you think about this role, like, makes it lonely across the board for many chiefs of staff?
It is that you have the full spectrum of knowledge of what's going on in the company and also behind the curtain, but not being able to tell anyone about everything.
You need to be really cautious with who you share information, right? Because you know sort of everything. The only person that I could share, like, everything that I know was myself.
I was also a trusted advisor or, like, a trusted person for l- a lot of employees, and I can't just bring that unfiltered to the CEO.So I was kind of in between, like, this sandwich situation where you have trust from both sides and you need to navigate how do you filter everything that you know so you don't say too much or too little.
It's a classic conundrum. It's like, you know, with great power comes great responsibility. [laughs] True that. But still, I think it's a lot of fun, and I honestly think it's one of the best roles there is.
What was your approach to that? Let's say an employee shares something sensitive, you know, their personal, personal experience, let's say.
What is the Lisa filter in terms of deciding what to share and what not to share? It would be, like, two questions, I guess.
It's like, does that bring anything good if I say this to others, if I, you know, transfer the message? Does that help the company?
Because first I'm serving the CEO, then I'm serving the company, then I'm serving people in the company, and then I'm serving myself, right? So does it serve the CEO or the company if I transfer this message?
And if not, does it do any harm also if I transfer this message, right? Like, that's kind of the two things. And it's really hard.
It's just really hard, because if you say too little, then sometimes people feel like, "Yeah, the leadership team does something behind the curtains, and it's not transparent. We don't know anything about it."
Then, of course, people start to worry. But again, if you say too much, then also maybe, I don't know, people start panicking. It's always a hard thing to navigate.
I would say also I'm a very intuitive person, so I also trust my gut a lot if I should say something to someone or not.
Reflecting a bit back on the chief of staff journey, I guess, in what ways did you see yourself, if you kind of take it like a zooming out, how did you see yourself grow, like, as a person through being in these tough situations?
I understood much better what my strengths and weaknesses are because it was just a, um, tremendous workload, so I would journal every day to get everything out of my head, and that journaling became a practice where I also saw the patterns of what I'm good at, what I enjoy, what I don't enjoy.
That was, I would say, a big thing for me. What were some of those patterns that you saw?
So I learned a lot that I really enjoy being with people, bringing people together, and really that I enjoy and I, I think I'm naturally good at networking.
Talking to people, make them feel safe, that they really open up and reassuring them and make them feel seen.
I think that's something that I learned that I'm really good at, that I didn't see as a product manager for myself.
And I also think this is something that helped me being a good chief of staff because, again, now there, the culture aspect, I help people feeling seen by the leadership team.
So I would say that was kind of my biggest learning for me, that I also continue to carry and always try to think how I can leverage this strength of mine.
Maybe a side question, but maybe it's also related, but why do you think that's a strength? Like, how did this develop for you? Making people feel seen is both good for the company and also good for the people, right?
The people feel more motivated, and so it provides business outcome because people do more and people maybe do also their work better. But also for the individual person, they have a cheerleader with me, right?
I tell them when they do something good, and they feel good about themselves. So it's both like I see it as a strength because it drives business outcome, but it also is generally just making people more happy.
And I think everything that makes people happy is sort of a strength maybe. [laughs] Yeah. Is there any way, like, this sort of developed for you personally? Like, how did you develop this strength yourself?
I think I would say I'm very empathetic, and when I do something, when I say something, I always think, "How would I feel if this is being done to me or if this is being said to me?"
And I like being told that I'm good at something, of course. I like if someone tells me that this was good or, "Hey, this is something unique to me." So I think that's why I started also doing it to other people.
So what happened after being a chief of staff? Did you go into a different role, or what happened after that? So I really liked the company. It was also a bit of my baby because I was there since the early days. And so
after being chief of staff there, I transitioned into another role because, again, learning curve, same thing. At that time, we had struggles or challenges with really, like, setting up the go-to-market really well.
So I transitioned into more of a go-to-market heavy role, setting up a pre-sales department, which after a year we evaluated that pre-sales in itself is a good thing, but we want to merge it more into, like, the existing commercial roles.
And then I was owning the execution of the go-to-market strategy as a whole. So I was doing business development and a lot of things that I would say, like, a product marketer would do, I was doing that.
Like the positioning, the messaging, what kind of problems are we actually solving for the users, how do we find out in sales talks, how do we find these problems out within the sales talks, and how can we then bridge that to us solving the problem.
I was doing a lot of that. What was that transition like to kind of go into that role? How did it feel being in that role? It was hard. [laughs] It was, it was really hard. That's what you wanted, right?
[laughs] Yeah, hard in another way. I came from knowing everything about the company and having full transparency to a more narrower role.
I was still within the leadership team.But before, you know, everything that a CEO knew, I knew. It was hard for me to give up this transparency. I completely agree that I didn't need that transparency in that role.
It was logic, but it was just really, really hard for me to give that up. It's like the sweet taste of nectar of having, like, the whole broadness of everything, like doing every role.
And as a chief of staff, you're parachuting also in, like, different roles, right?
And solving problem here within the company, solving problem there, external for the company, and then really, like, specializing once again in a role in a sector and leaving that full transparency thing.
For me, that was the hardest part of that role, and I struggled a lot with that. How did you manage?
I think during that time, I kind of also realized that I really want to do my own thing because that would be the only place where I would have the possibility to really work on the full breadth of a company from really, like, mundane, maybe admin things to sales to marketing to the product itself to I don't know what, like doing everything.
I think the only possible way is to start your own company, right? I think that was kind of the realization.
I, I had that somewhere in my head always that I wanted to do this, but during that transition, I kind of realized, "Oh, this might be something that I need to pursue at some point."
And I kind of hold on to that while saying, "Okay, but I'm still learning a lot here with that new role, so I better stay." There were two things happening, I guess.
Your day-to-day, which is at the company, but at the same time, the seed had been planted.
I guess it had been planted maybe a while, but then it only started maybe being watered towards the end, I guess, later stages of your time there.
What helped water-- Like, what was the water that was, like, feeding it and growing, and what eventually grew out of the seed?
During that time as a chief of staff, I was really drawn to see how to take, like, really hard decisions.
I think that's a skill that I don't see many people talking about it, but I think taking hard decisions is a really, really great skill, being able to do that. What is a hard decision? What would be an example of that?
A transition that changes the trajectory of the company and might even affect job opportunities of the people or, like, your employees, right?
But you still need to do it because you either grow or you die [chuckles] at some point as a company. So, like, a decision to go into a new market or a decision to not go into a new market even, right?
These are decisions that, of course, only the leadership team will do or take, and I was always drawn to that.
So that kind of planted the seed as I was, again, one person within the leadership team, but, like, then also only one specific point of view within the company.
It's not the fault of the company, but I felt a bit limited in the kind of decisions that I can take to learn that. I wanted to have harder decisions. I wanted to have, like, harder problems.
And I think that let the plan grow more and more until at some point I realized I'm not happy with where I am right now, and I feel like I could do something else that would help me much more in learning the skill and growing.
And so I talked to the CEO, who was still my manager there, and we agreed that I'll reduce my work hours into a four-day workweek, so I have the other remaining days to think more about starting my own company and trying things out and experiment.
Is this agreed that he or she was supportive? Yeah, definitely. I'm forever grateful really for everything that this company and the people there have done to me.
I'm forever grateful because being able to do this in parallel is not something that's common, I would say, and not something that a lot of companies allow.
Also, like, reducing the work hours to build something else where people already know that you're gonna leave at some point, right? So I'm really grateful.
It kind of just shows, like, the strength of the bond and, I mean, you were also there for eight years. So what were the experiments? Let's run through some of those and love to talk about where we landed eventually.
So as I said, I saw this networking part and connecting part as one of my strengths.
So I thought, well, it would be really great if I would be able to build up a community or to build up something where people can really connect and find out more about themselves.
So the problems that I wanted to solve was that especially women in my age, we struggle a lot with, like, what do we do, work?
And, like, how do we combine, like, that we want to make a career, but we also want to have a family. What's actually our goal in life sort of, and how do we balance that?
And, uh, I had a lot of people struggling with that, so I thought about, like, making a retreat, especially only for women, to bring in coaches and help navigate this and also build a community and connect with other people who have the same problems because it just feels, as you said, like, also in the summit, like, it just feels good to know that other people have the same struggles and being able to talk with them about it.
An idea was to do a retreat like that. A lot of people were interested, but the willingness to pay was not there. That was really interesting to find out.
So, you know, I created ads on Meta and did a fake website to have a waiting list for this retreat, and I saw a lot of people clicking on the ad, but none of them went onto the waiting list, for example.So I had these ideas, and then I had ideas maybe I should go back into civil engineering because there's a lot of businesses right now from baby boomers that want to retire, but they have kind of their legacy company and don't know what to do with it.
So I was like, "Okay, maybe I can buy an HVAC company or, like, something in construction." But that also didn't really click with me.
And at some point I was really frustrated because I tried out so many ideas, and none of them really either stuck with me or really didn't work out.
So in summer, I was like, "I really need to get out of my head," and I used to do that doing pottery. So I went to an open pottery studio here in Munich and just did pottery on Fridays just to get out of my head.
[laughs] I guess that became, like, um, even more water [laughs] for the seed. Yeah. [laughs] That was, that was- Exactly.
That was like a whole splash, like, uh, someone brought a hose and then just, uh, put a lot of water in there. Yeah, I was in the studio, and I was having a good time.
You know, when I do pottery, I just forget about time, and I don't look at my phone for like, I don't know, three hours. It's like very zen.
You're like, you're just being in the moment, do- doing something with your hands. So I like that a lot, but I didn't like the studio because it was really crammed. There was a lot of dirt.
They didn't do anything with the community that was there. They didn't really make people connect. And at some point I was like, "Why am I not doing this?" You know?
[laughs] And then I, I sat down, wrote the business model and did some numbers, and I was like, "Okay, this is actually not that bad." Showed it to my husband, he was like, "Oh, this is actually really not that bad."
[laughs] So I was like, "Well, you know, maybe I just try it out. What's the worst that can happen?" And then I started looking for a studio and, uh, opened up a pottery studio.
[laughs] So you just finally began looking for a spot, and give us a timeframe from, from the first experiments, you know, from running the Meta ads for the retreat. Like, what kind of timeframe are we talking about?
So running Meta ads and everything for the retreat was, like, last year, February, March, April. That was kind of my first weeks of really planning out things.
As I said, like, I was still working, like, four days a week for that other company, so I didn't have, like, that much time also to do, like, other stuff.
But yeah, it was, like, February, March, April maybe I was brainstorming different ideas, looking at different problems. Then in, I think June, I was doing more pottery.
Sort of July, I was like, "Maybe I can just do this." And then in August, I registered the company, started looking for a studio.
That took some time because, you know, the rent is the most expensive thing within this business model.
So I also looked for a studio that was fitting where I didn't have to do a lot of construction or fit outs, but the rent was also cheap. I found something in November.
I moved in first of December, set up everything, also during Christmas. My husband helped me a lot with that. [laughs] And then mid-January, I opened up. So how has it been with the Munich Clay Collective?
Now that I look back, one of, like, my biggest pain points working in software or general, like, working over the past years, especially after COVID, has been that I spent way too much time in front of a screen.
Everything I do, I do with my laptop. Every meeting, every notes that I'm writing, every script that I'm doing, everything was with my laptop, and it made me really feel quite miserable.
And then I understood that the pottery was actually that nice because I was away from screen for some time, you know, and really, like, in the moment for some time. I get to have this now much, much more.
Of course, I'm working on my laptop also a lot because 80% of what I'm doing is marketing, and some marketing or, like, sales I need to do with my laptop, of course, but I spend so much more time off the screen now talking to real people [laughs] in a physical environment, and it's not as hard of a decision right now yet because I don't have employees whose salary depend on me.
I get to take decisions to shape a company of my own. I get to create something out of nothing, and that has been the best feeling ever.
I think if we kind of track back this conversation, even when we started talking in the beginning, you told me how you've always been curious, and you just wanted to work on challenging problems, and even when you were working at your last company, when things flatline, you kind of look for the next challenge.
And, you know, the beauty of being a generalist is that you do general things. [laughs] You do a bit of everything, right?
You know, and I think a lot of chiefs of staff that are listening to this podcast, past or present, can probably relate to that, like wanting to continuously challenge ourselves. Yeah.
What are the things that you're kind of pulling from those eight years at your last company and being that generalist?
I think especially by being a chief of staff, but also by, like, transitioning to different roles, I really learned to learn new things quickly.
I learned what to do when there's something in front of me that I know nothing about, and I have to solve this somehow. Someone throws me all the problem and say, "Hey, go fix this."
I learned how to do this really, really well, and I think that the transitioning into different roles, but especially the chief of staff role, has been the best possible training ground for that, also to be an entrepreneur.
And if you could help me understand a bit more, like, what is that exactly? Like, when you're able to adapt quickly to new environments and learn, like, what is that skill? Like, open that up if you can.
So adaptability itself, I think, is a skill, but what I mean is being able to grasp a problem quickly, like understand something really quickly, and search for the right help in order to solve problems efficiently.I think that's kind of a skill.
I don't know if you can call it a skill, but I learned how to ask the right people for help. Because I was always the first person in a new role in a company, and also I was the first one doing the chief of staff role.
I always just got on LinkedIn and looked for people who had done it and who I found interesting and thought, "Okay, maybe this is a similar environment," and I just texted them.
I was like, "Hey, I just found you here on LinkedIn looking for someone who's maybe done this challenge. I would really love to talk to you. Do you have some time? That would be amazing."
And it's surprising how people get back to you and generally wanna just share their experience and help you learn.
So I think that that has been, like, a skill that I learned there, and that's kind of the skill that I mean with, like, being able to not adapt real quick, but learning a new skill real quick.
I think what you said is really true, you know.
Like, being able to grasp a problem, understand, like, what is it that is really in front of me right now, and then figure out how to be resourceful in figuring it out [laughs], you know?
Like, is it about talking to the right people? Is it about opening it up in different ways, you know, dissecting the problem? And, like, just being resourceful I think is really important, you know.
Like, being chief of staff is about being resourceful and finding ways to solve something that maybe no one has solved yet. Yeah. Sometimes it can get in your way, though, I think.
[laughs] Because I learned also as a chief of staff to be, like, really resourceful, and sometimes, I don't know.
Just as an example, totally, like, private life, but we're planning a trip to Italy, just like a road trip.
The endpoint is clear, because we're invited to a wedding somewhere in Italy, and it's just too far away for us to do in one go. And so we said, "Okay, we're gonna do a road trip."
And the resourceful brain of mine is like, "Okay, but I don't want to get off the initial road too much, because then we need to drive more, and it's not that efficient." [laughs] Yeah.
[laughs] The other brain is like, "Yeah, but on the road, there's nothing that's really interesting. It's worthwhile to stay," you know? [laughs] Right. Right. Right. So it can sometimes get in your way.
[laughs] Maybe sometimes the, the best thing to do is just to do the simplest thing. Like, is, like, just to be, like, brute force, like, just go. Just straight. [laughs] Yeah, maybe.
[laughs] I tell my husband, we just go 15 hours straight.
[laughs] Lisa, we're gonna wrap up soon, but I wanted to ask you, you know, for chiefs of staff listening, you know, you've had this journey of being with one company, seeing so many different sides of the company as the company grew, and then also having, like, three different roles, probably more unofficial ones as well, I'm guessing, and, you know, going from that path, experimenting, and then becoming a founder, running The Munich Clay Collective, starting your own thing, being a founder after having worked for founders for quite some time.
For chiefs of staff listening, what advice or thoughts would you say for people thinking also of, like, what could come next after being a chief of staff?
So I think there's three different paths, actually, that chief of staffs usually take. One can be if the company's growing, great. Good on you.
Then maybe the CEO office or something like that will grow as well, and you kind of become the head of the CEO office, coordinating that CEO office, and that's kind of how your responsibility can grow and how your role maybe also will change, and you'll have more different kind of challenges.
The second is transitioning into a role within the company, into maybe opening up a new department, maybe, like, in an existing department, but there's, like, a role opening up.
Maybe that can also be perfectly fine for you, and you just find out through the chief of staff role.
Sometimes people do the chief of staff role because they actually don't know what they want to specialize in, and during that time, they find out what they want to specialize in.
If that's you, then follow that and go into that role.
Even though you will lose some transparency, that's gonna be the trade-off, but if you know that you want to specialize in that one thing, maybe that's worthwhile taking.
That wasn't for me, so I didn't feel like I want to specialize in something. And so maybe the third path for you is trying it out yourself and become an entrepreneur.
And what I want to say there is that it's not on or off. It's not one or zero. It's not that you need to leave your company completely to become a founder and do your own thing. You can start that as a side hustle.
You can first be a freelancer in something. It has never been easier to build a digital product.
Like, you can do a lot of things on the side and try things out and see how it goes if you are not the kind of person that want to hop off a wagon and say, "Okay, I don't need any security, and I can just do this full-time now."
If it's not for you, there's a lot of different possibilities to still do this while you're being employed. Last thing.
I found this phrase that you've written, which is, "Creating sensory experiences where people want to stay." Can you help us close out this call with why this is important to you and how that shows up in your life?
As I said, I'm a very intuitive person, and so are, I think, also a lot of other people in the world. But the business world is not made up for intuitive people, I feel like.
It's a lot made up for people who are, like, really strict of the numbers and of the rules and spreadsheets.
And I want to live in a world where people feel like they belong by really feeling welcome in a place that really calms them down, calms their nervous system down, as it will.
And you can do that by a lot of sensory things, like the smell in the room, the music that you hear in the background, things that you touch with your hands, the things that you see.
Like, everything can be very calming, and I think it's actually a business asset that's very undervalued to create rooms or create, like, spaces where businesses can create these experiences for people so they feel good when they're in your space.
And then they want to purchase something, or then they want to work with you or whatever it is. I think what you're working on and the way you're showing up, it's really emblematic of the work that you're doing, so.
So I think there's a lot of coherence there. [laughs] Thank you so much, Lisa. Thank you, Tristan.
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