𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗳𝗼𝗿𝗺𝗮𝘁𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗚𝗿𝗼𝘄𝘁𝗵 𝗖𝗼𝗮𝗰𝗵𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗙𝗶𝗿𝘀𝘁-𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲 𝗙𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀
It’s not just about scaling your business.
It’s also about scaling you.
From Fortune 500 companies to fast-growing startups, I’ve coached leaders at every stage. Today, my mission is focused: helping first-time founders scale themselves as fast as they scale their companies.
 
𝗠𝘆 𝗙𝗼𝗰𝘂𝘀
Your startup can only grow as fast as you do. As a first-time founder, you’re under pressure from investors, your team, and your family—all while learning on the fly skills that others spend decades mastering. Whether you’re raising capital, hiring your first team, or pushing toward product-market fit, I help you close the gap between where you are and where your company needs you to be.
 
𝗪𝗵𝘆 𝗠𝘆 𝗔𝗽𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗮𝗰𝗵 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝗸𝘀
I bring 20+ years of coaching 10,000+ leaders, founder experience, and cutting-edge insights from neuroscience and behavioral psychology. The result: a proven path to accelerate both personal and company growth. My frameworks help you:
• Transform self-doubt into clarity and influence
• Build and inspire high-performing, durable teams
• Raise capital while staying true to your vision
• Create sustainable success without burnout
• Leverage your existing strengths while closing critical skill gaps
• Grow yourself as fast as your company 
 
𝗪𝗵𝗼 𝗜 𝗦𝗲𝗿𝘃𝗲
My one-on-one clients are founders who:
• Want tailored, responsive coaching that meets them where they are
• Care deeply about building strong teams and cultures
• Aim to create both impact and enterprise value
• Refuse to accept that success means sacrificing their families, health, or lives outside the company
• Are willing to grow personally and professionally to become the leader their company needs 
 
𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗹 𝗜𝗺𝗽𝗮𝗰𝘁
From doubling revenue to unlocking fundraising rounds to transforming team dynamics, my clients consistently achieve breakthrough results—while building lives they actually want to live.
 
𝗪𝗮𝗻𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗖𝗼𝗻𝗻𝗲𝗰𝘁?
Visit www.andrewpoles.com/contact or DM me here.

We use the word “complete” all the time.
But most people confuse it with “finished.”

They’re not the same.

You can end a relationship and still be carrying it.
You can be in an ongoing partnership and feel fully clear.

Completion is a function of how you relate to reality - not a status update.
In this clip (from my conversation on the Sleep Is A Skill podcast with Mollie), I break down what I mean by being complete - and why it has real implications for how you live, lead, and even sleep.

Andrew Poles

Coaching first-time founders to grow themselves and their companies | 3x Founder | 22+ years coaching partners like NASA, Dell, Schwab + 10,000 people worldwide

What does insomnia have to do with integrity?
More than most leaders realize.

I once worked with a man who had slept 1–2 hours a night for years. His health was at risk. After doing deep completion work in his relationships and life, he slept 8–10 hours for the first time in decades.

There’s a connection between how complete you are and how well you sleep.
And more than that - your sleep may be a lagging indicator of how powerfully you’re living and leading.

If this resonates, I unpack it further on the Sleep Is A Skill podcast with the amazing Mollie Eastman, episode linked below.  

Sometimes it’s not a sleep issue.
It’s a leadership issue.

#Leadership #ExecutiveCoaching #SleepIsASkill #FounderHealth #Integrity

This is the part of leadership most spreadsheets can’t capture. When behavior stops making sense, there’s almost always unseen pressure in the room.
What stands out here is the refusal to confuse kindness with lowering standards. Real leadership is keeping the bar high AND removing shame from the climb.
Culture isn’t what you say you value - it’s how safe it feels for people to be human while doing hard work.

Founder @ Humble | Strategic Partner @ Loud | Follow for Self Improvement, Growth Strategy & Being A Better Human | Entrepreneurship Coach

You have no idea what people are dealing with.
Not even close.
And that’s ok.

Because you just have to be kind.

The person who snapped in your meeting might have a kid who’s struggling.

The one who “doesn’t care anymore” might be keeping a marriage together with duct tape.

The quiet one who missed a deadline might be dealing with a parent who’s fading, fast.

Work makes it easy to pretend everyone is a machine.

Metrics. Output. Deadlines. Slack green dots.

👉 But leadership is what you do when the spreadsheet stops explaining the behaviour.

Bad leaders get this part wrong: 

They think kindness is a personality trait.

It isn’t.
It’s a professional skill. 
And it’s different to being NICE.

Kind isn’t soft.
Kind is controlled.

Nice avoids the hard chat.
Kind has it, without making the person feel small.

Nice lowers standards so nobody feels uncomfortable.
Kind keeps standards high and removes the shame from getting there.

I learned this the hard way building companies from nothing.

⚠️ When you’re under pressure yourself, your instincts get ugly, and you start to:
Push harder. Watch closer. Assume the worst.

It feels “productive”.

It’s usually expensive.

Because people don’t leave jobs first.
They leave the feeling of being misunderstood.

So if you want a practical way to lead like a grown up, try this:

Before you judge the performance, check the pressure they are under.

BUT, a simple “You alright?” is not leadership.
Anyone can say that.

📌This is leadership:

1.	Ask a better question
“What’s taking up headspace right now?”
It gives them a door that isn’t dramatic.

2.	Offer a real option
“Do you want time, help, or privacy?”
Most people just need one of the three.

3.	Separate the person from the work
“You’re not your output. Let’s fix the work.”
That one sentence changes everything.

4.	Adjust the load, not the standards
“What do we de-scope for 7 days?”
Pressure without control creates mistakes.

5.	Protect them in public, coach them in private.
If you correct someone publicly, you teach the whole team to hide.

None of this is “being nice”.

It’s how you keep good people good.

Your culture isn’t your values on a Notion page.
It’s how safe it feels to have a bad week around you.

So yes, you seriously have NO idea what people are dealing with.

Lead like you know that.

-
♻️: Repost to inspire.
➕: Follow Charlie Lass.

Most founders don’t get stuck because things are hard.
They get stuck because of the story they tell themselves about why things shouldn’t be this way.

Loss. Missed signals. Bad hires. Broken trust.
The pain is real — but the suffering is optional.

This week I'm sharing about how leaders unknowingly trap themselves after setbacks, and how dropping one word can unlock clarity, resilience, and forward momentum.

If you’ve been carrying something heavy lately, I hope this offers you some needed clarity.

Sadness: Yes. Suffering: No. Over the last few weeks, several founders I coach have been moving through loss. Not just personal loss — though that’s b

Open article: The “Should” Trap in Leadership by Andrew Poles • 4 min read

When Ken Cox and I were talking recently on the Clicks and Bricks podcast, we kept circling back to something that doesn’t get talked about enough in business:

Your company grows at the speed of your own growth.

Not just revenue.

You can still be making money and feel something in the business has stalled.

Energy drops. Culture gets stale. Decisions feel heavier.

I’ve lived that.

In my first business, I thought learning business meant learning tactics. Strategy. Sales. Operations.

And yes — you do have to learn the “game.”

But what I didn’t understand then was that every ceiling I hit in the business was connected to a ceiling in me.

Fear I hadn’t dealt with.
Conversations I didn’t want to have.
Identity I hadn’t owned yet, or hadn't generated the courage to let go. 

Ken asked me about authenticity and about “next right actions.”

For me, performance really comes down to that:

What is the next right action of integrity here?
Not the most comfortable action.
Not the one that protects your ego.
The one that’s actually right.

That’s where growth happens.
And when that shifts, the business shifts.

If you’re a founder, especially early-stage, I think you’ll appreciate how deep this conversation goes. 

I'll put the link to the full episode in the comments.

This one gets at something many leadership conversations miss. 
Culture isn’t revealed in big moments or lofty values statements.
It shows up in how people respond when learning is visible and imperfect.
If someone can’t ask the same question multiple times without paying a social cost, you don’t have a clarity problem - you have a safety problem.
Patience isn’t softness.
It’s how teams actually get smart, fast.
Worth sitting with.

Profit & sanity for founder-led businesses | Ex-SaaS CEO, PwC-trained | Fix the basics → build systems & teams → layer human-centric AI | Founder Coach & Fractional CFO | Strategic Adviser

Your true leadership score isn’t how you answer the first question...
It’s how you handle the 7th.

I saw this play out with a client.

She’d just been promoted to CEO. 
Bright, capable, eager.

But in one board session, she asked the same question five times.

Not because she was slow.
Because she was learning.

And in that moment, her c-suite’s patience (or lack of it) shaped her confidence for weeks.

Leadership shows up in the micro-tests:

1. Patience is strength
 ↳ Losing it after the 3rd question shows weakness, not authority.
 ↳ In healthy teams, systems – the structures, rituals, and rules that shape how work happens – and empathetic peers absorb repeated questions so no one feels stupid asking.

2. Questions = progress
 ↳ Repeated questions mean onboarding, curiosity, and learning.
 ↳ Would your team feel safe to ask the “stupid” question 7 times?

3. Empathy = efficiency
 ↳ Shame slows learning. Safety speeds it up.
 ↳ Do you lead the way you wish you’d been led?

4. Patience = science
 ↳ Cognitive research shows people rarely lock in new knowledge the first time.
 ↳ Real learning takes multiple exposures, spaced over time, in a safe environment.
 ↳ Patience isn’t indulgence, it’s science-based leadership.

Forget engagement surveys.

Your culture reveals itself in how you answer the 7th question.

👇🏼 Comment if your team would pass the 7th-question test.

🔔 Follow Si Conroy and ♻️ Share if you like this.

📩 Weekly sanity in my ‘Founder Group Therapy’ newsletter: https://lnkd.in/erk_vfQc

Most leadership failures don’t come from lack of strategy.
They come from a split-second neurological hijack you don’t even notice.

This post is about why founders “lose it” in board meetings, exec reviews, and hard conversations – and how to reclaim control in the moments that actually define your leadership.

If you’ve ever sent the email you regretted, pushed when you should’ve paused, or damaged trust under pressure… this is for you.

Here’s something most founders don’t realize until it costs them real trust: Your worst leadership moments don’t come from bad intentions. They come f

Open article: What Emotional Mastery Actually Looks Like by Andrew Poles • 4 min read

What Emotional Mastery Actually Looks Like

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