Rod Power strengthens founder networks with Marlee

Rod Power is a business super-coach and facilitator to many key players in Sydney’s flourishing startup industry. He uses Marlee to help founders extract their fullest potential in their chosen ventures.

He has been coaching groups of entrepreneurs via the founder forums at forward-thinking and innovative startup support organisation TechSydney. TechSydney aims to make Sydney a top-10 global tech ecosystem by fostering peer learning between founders, cultivating up-skilled tech talent pools, connecting international experts with the Sydney startup sector, and presenting a united voice to government, corporates, and the international technology community.

Rod's clients:

Tech entrepreneurs and startup founders who are part of the founder forums at TechSydney in Australia.

Their challenge:

For founders, the journey can be isolating. The pressure is high, the pace relentless, and finding people who truly understand what you're navigating is rare. Even in peer forums, building real rapport takes time. This challenge is especially acute for first-time founders, or even seasoned entrepreneurs who’ve outgrown the structure of an accelerator and are now scaling solo.

At that point, connecting with others who’ve been through it (or are going through it now) becomes crucial. Founder forums like those at TechSydney offer a rare space for honest feedback, shared experience, and working through the personal and business hurdles that can quietly stall growth. But for any of that to work, one thing has to happen first: trust needs to form, and fast.

But even with the right people in the room, rapport takes time. That’s why Rod Power’s coaching plays a pivotal role in accelerating connection and trust.

Rod’s solution:

To make the most of the founder forums, building trust and intimacy between participants quickly is essential. Rod uses Marlee’s Motivational Analysis to gain a deeper understanding of his clients by measuring 48 attitudes, creating a unique fingerprint that highlights key strengths and potential blind spots that could affect their business ambitions.

These insights are uncovered early, and simply having them illuminated is a major benefit for each individual. It also fast-tracks a sense of trust and camaraderie within the group. As Rod puts it:

“The most valuable commodity in these sessions is trust.”

Rod runs a group debrief, giving each participant the chance to explore their results and see how others compare. Perhaps most importantly, he observed that many entrepreneurs, no matter how successful, established, or in-demand, struggle with a surprisingly common issue: Impostor Syndrome.

“I am so surprised at the overwhelming sense that even some of the most successful founders seem to carry within them that they are ‘faking it’; Marlee is hugely beneficial in validating their entrepreneurial leadership skills and helping them to realize their potential.”

The outcome:

As a coach, Rod prioritizes relationship building. He believes Marlee provides a foundation of insights that enable him to communicate on a deeper, more personalized level with each client.

“It’s allowing me, over time, to develop a language that resonates with each individual.”

Rod notes that people are often surprised by the blind spots Marlee reveals, and just how different the results are from one person to the next.

“People are often very surprised by the blind spots that Marlee identifies, and what continually surprises me is how non-uniform the results are. Marlee is truly unique.”