Rod Power is a business supercoach and facilitator to many key players in Sydney’s flourishing startup industry. He uses Fingerprint for Success (F4S) to help his clients 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.
Tech entrepreneurs and startup founders who are part of the founder forums at TechSydney in Australia.
An entrepreneur’s life can be a lonely one.
You’ve got investors to answer to, employees to pay (and future employees to recruit), brand awareness to build, regulatory frameworks to adhere to, customers to acquire, funding rounds to raise, and competitors working around the clock to get their product to market before you do.
Meanwhile, you’re probably completely consumed by your work and there’s not much time for socializing. And your friends, your spouse, will find it difficult to comprehend what you’re going through (and maybe even think you’re crazy) so sounding off on your day can be like you’re speaking a different language.
Even more, imagine for a moment that you’re at a party. Inevitably, a bunch of strangers will cycle around each other, and the question ‘so, what do you do?’ will float around. You mention you’re an entrepreneur, and eyes start lighting up - they see a couple of things in you now: ‘money’ and ‘potential employer’. Suddenly, those cordial conversations turn into being bombarded with pitches and plans, and it’s not relaxing, nor is it conducive of a meaningful relationship.
For first-time founders – or even for those who are serial entrepreneurs – it can be incredibly difficult to identify professional peers who have been through this before, or are going through it now. Once you’ve exited a startup accelerator or incubator program and begin to scale your business, connecting with a like-minded support network becomes even more crucial. Founder forums provide support, feedback, and a confidential sounding board to work through business challenges and personal issues that might be hindering the growth of your company.
However, rapport takes time no matter who is involved. And that’s where Rod Power’s coaching comes in.
For everyone to make the most of the founder forums opportunity, it is crucial to build trust and intimacy quickly between participants.
Rod utilizes the F4S Assessment Engine to gain a deeper understanding of his clients by measuring 48 of their attitudes - creating a unique ‘fingerprint’ identifying key strengths and potential blind spots that could affect their business ambitions.
These factors are identified quickly, having them illuminated is of great benefit to the individual, and fast-tracks a sense of trust and camaraderie among the group. As Rod says, “the most valuable commodity in these sessions is trust”. He does a group debrief, where each person has the chance to discuss results and see how others compare.
Perhaps most importantly, Rod identified that many entrepreneurs, no matter how successful, established or in-demand, suffer from one 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’; F4S is hugely beneficial in validating their entrepreneurial leadership skills and helping them to realize their potential”.
As a coach, Rod is big on relationship building. He believes F4S gives him a foundation of insights that allow him to communicate on a deeper level with his clients, saying: “It’s allowing me, over time, to develop a language that resonates with each individual.”
“People are often very surprised by the blind spots that F4S identifies, and what continually surprises me is how non-uniform the results are. F4S is truly unique.”