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The Intentional Conversations that Build Powerful CoFounder Relationships

The Conversation Factory

Release Date: 04/15/2024

Join or Die: Behind the Scenes of Creative Collaboration show art Join or Die: Behind the Scenes of Creative Collaboration

The Conversation Factory

Get free chapters of my book, Good Talk, and master the art of conversations big and small: Please support the podcast! 💌 : https://spoti.fi/3QzcPAW 💌 : or with : https://bit.ly/support-tcf-monthly : Check out for the full transcript and video highlights: Key Chapters 00:00 Growing Up Together: A Family Legacy 02:58 The Birth of a Documentary Idea 06:02 Navigating the Journey: Challenges and Growth 09:02 The Lens of Community: A New Perspective 12:01 Conflict and Collaboration: The Art of Working Together 14:54 The Long Haul: Commitment and Transformation 22:15 The Transformative...

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Founder-Led Sales and Building Co-founder Relationships show art Founder-Led Sales and Building Co-founder Relationships

The Conversation Factory

Get free chapters of my book, Good Talk, and master the art of conversations big and small: Please support the podcast! 💌 : https://spoti.fi/3QzcPAW 💌 : or with : : Check out for the full transcript and video highlights. We break down:  The Importance of Deep and Authentic Conversations and unpack how Natalise fosters honest and open conversations and has worked to build a company culture that reflects these values.  Intentional Co-founder Relationship Building: We talk about how Natalise and her co-founder, Nathan Brown, approached building a strong relationship...

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The Inner Work of Leadership with Carole Robin, PhD show art The Inner Work of Leadership with Carole Robin, PhD

The Conversation Factory

Master the art of conversations big and small - both inside yourself and in your teams and organization. Get free chapters of my book, Good Talk: Please support the podcast! 💌 Subscribe on Spotify: 💌 iTunes: or with a monthly contribution here: or make a one-time donation here:  For the full transcript, video highlights, and more show links, check out the episode page here: Every conversation - especially the hard ones - is an opportunity to learn more about yourself, to learn about another person and to learn about interpersonal dynamics - if you can set aside judgment...

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Your Brain on Beautiful Conversations with Anjan Chatterjee show art Your Brain on Beautiful Conversations with Anjan Chatterjee

The Conversation Factory

Download free chapters from Please support the podcast by  or , making , or making . Check out for the full transcript and video highlights. Dr. Anjan Chatterjee is a renowned professor and the founding Director of the Penn Center for Neuroaesthetics. He's a leading expert on how our brains perceive beauty and art, and author of an engaging book on this topic: “The Aesthetic Brain: How We Evolved to Desire Beauty and Enjoy Art" In this beautiful conversation, we explore: the intersection of beauty, conversation, and the human brain how our biological evolution has...

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Changing the Political Conversation with Nick Troiano show art Changing the Political Conversation with Nick Troiano

The Conversation Factory

If you want to change the game, changing the rules and incentives of the game is a powerful approach. Few people who watch the news - or those folks who avoid watching the news! - would say the political system in the United States is going according to plan. The founding fathers, if they were alive today, would be aghast at the unbridgeable chasm that seems to have developed in our political culture, making dialogue, compromise and progress nearly impossible on some of our most pressing issues.  In fact, our founding fathers warned against the rise of what they called factions in their...

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The Secrets of Motivation and Systems Change with Becca Block, PhD show art The Secrets of Motivation and Systems Change with Becca Block, PhD

The Conversation Factory

Warning - this episode uses a specific curse word - a lot. And once we started using one, we started using more of them. So…if f-bombs, sprinkled like salt are not your cup of tea, this is a good episode to skip! My guest today is Rebecca R Block, PhD, who is an expert in helping organizations build programs, services and products that equip young people to develop the confidence and skills they need to enter adulthood as thriving and adaptable lifelong learners. She has spent the last 14 years leading the design, improvement, and evaluation of educational programs and services to make them...

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The Conversation Factory

Sometimes the bold goals we set out to achieve actually happen, and sometimes something even more amazing happens - something better than we can imagine. Usually that happens because of the people we meet along the way, the conversations we have, the unexpected connections we make that open up new doors - in a word, Serendipity. I had always wondered about what amazing, powerful and sustained conversations led to the High Line Park in New York City becoming a reality. Have you walked the High Line? Literally millions of people a year walk some of its 1.45 mile length, enjoying expansive views...

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Art that Changes the Conversation show art Art that Changes the Conversation

The Conversation Factory

Art has the power to change and even lead the conversation, to spark curiosity and fuel real engagement. But what comes first in a powerful creative project?  The idea and the message? The tools and the talent? Or The Funding, that can make or break it all? My guest today is , who creates art on a grand scale that goes beyond awe. He is an Artist focused on amplifying positive impact. He does that both in the process of how he creates his art, through community, and in the images it produces, finding visual metaphors that stick with people, long after they’ve seen the work. His mission...

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The Conversation Factory

Today my guests are Lisa Kay Solomon and Chris Ertel, the co-authors of the powerhouse 2014 book Moments of Impact: How to Design Strategic Conversations That Accelerate Change, which celebrates its 10th anniversary this year! I devoured this book 10 years ago and I think you might enjoy it, too! Lisa Kay Solomon is currently a Designer in Residence at the Stanford d. school, where she teaches classes such as Inventing the Future where students imagine, debate and analyze the 50-year futures of emerging tech, and works closely with the K12 community to make futures thinking a mainstay of 21c...

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The Problem with Change and the Power of Stability, Humanity and Praise with Ashley Goodall show art The Problem with Change and the Power of Stability, Humanity and Praise with Ashley Goodall

The Conversation Factory

My guest today is Ashley Goodall, a leadership expert who has spent his career exploring large organizations from the inside, most recently as an executive at Cisco. He is the co-author of Nine Lies About Work, which was selected as the best management book of 2019 by Strategy + Business and as one of Amazon’s best business and leadership books of 2019. It is an awesome book - highly recommended. If, after listening to this conversation you want to hear more (and I think you will!), take a listen to him and his co-author, Marcus Buckingham, talking on the HBR Idea Cast about lie #5 - -...

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More Episodes

My guests today are Rei Wang and Anita Hossain, Co-founders of coaching platform The Grand, which was seed funded by Alexis Ohanian’s firm Seven Seven Six in 2023. Rei is the Chief Product Officer and Anita is the CEO.

I met Rei ages ago, in her early days in NYC at General Assembly, where she worked as a Product Manager and Global Community Lead, developing educational opportunities for students.

And I was excited to interview her about her work as the CEO of the Dorm Room fund at First Round Capital a few years back to get her perspectives around the intersection of community and product design…especially when the community IS the product. Check out that conversation here. Rei cultivated a vibrant startup ecosystem, mentoring over 250 entrepreneurs on various aspects of business management and fundraising. Their leadership garnered recognition, including the Forbes 30 under 30 award.

Rei and Anita met during their time at First Round Capital, where Anita was the Head of Knowledge. While there, she helped hundreds of entrepreneurs connect deeply and vulnerably, to share their concerns and to learn from each other. Anita was also an executive coach with the renowned coaching firm, Reboot, and is a certified Neuro-Linguistic Programming Practitioner.

Key Advice for Working Through Challenges

  • Prevention is first and foremost! Speak early and often to reduce buildup, bottling up and boiling over of tensions

  • Make feedback about actions and behaviors, not about the person or their personality

  • Rei suggests that using a simple framework like SBIO is a great way to frame feedback. (Situation or data, the Behavior you see, the Impact it has on you, and the Opportunity for improvement or transformation)

  • Make sure feedback conversations are two-sided, with both partners regularly asking for and offering feedback

  • Anita underscores the importance of Co-Creation of resolutions to challenges instead of telling someone to be different. Working on these tensions with a sense of collaboration can lead to reduced defensiveness.

Head over to theconversationfactory.com/listen for full episode transcripts, links, show notes  and more key quotes and ideas. You can also head over there and become a monthly supporter of the show for as little as $8 a month. You'll get complimentary access to exclusive workshops and resources that I only share with this circle of facilitators and leaders.

Links

The Grand

My previous conversation with Rei Wang