Bio

Alicia Cramer is a renowned mindset expert, an author, coach, consultant, and a serial entrepreneur. Having worked with hundreds of private clients for well over a decade - from startups to owners of multi-million-dollar companies, Alicia has an intimate understanding of the mindset pitfalls that affect entrepreneurs. Her clients include successful business professionals, executives, and entrepreneurs who are driven to take their personal and professional success to the next level. 

Summary

Imposter syndrome is a significant barrier for many startup founders, often preventing them from stepping into leadership roles, such as CEO. In this enlightening conversation, mindset expert Alicia Kramer shares her insights on how beliefs and self-image shape our capabilities and outcomes in business. She discusses the importance of understanding our subconscious programming and how it influences our actions, particularly for technically-oriented individuals who may struggle with leadership roles. Alicia emphasizes that true success stems from addressing these internal conflicts and cultivating grit, which can be developed through personal growth and determination. Through her own journey and experiences with clients, she illustrates the transformative power of mindset work in overcoming limitations and unlocking potential.

The conversation

The dialogue between Jothy Rosenberg and Alicia Kramer in this episode of the Designing Successful Startups podcast is a profound exploration of the impact of mindset on entrepreneurial success. Alicia, a mindset expert and coach, passionately discusses the often-overlooked psychological barriers that hinder startup founders, particularly focusing on the widespread issue of imposter syndrome. This phenomenon is especially prevalent among technically skilled individuals who may not see themselves as suitable leaders, despite their qualifications and passion for their projects. Alicia's insights reveal that mindset transcends mere positive thinking; it is a complex web of beliefs and attitudes that shapes how entrepreneurs view themselves and their capacity for success.

Further into the conversation, Alicia elaborates on her unique approach to coaching, which integrates her background in hypnotherapy with business strategy. She highlights the importance of addressing the subconscious beliefs that can sabotage success, advocating for a deeper, more introspective approach to personal and professional development. Entrepreneurs often face external challenges, but Alicia points out that the real transformation occurs when individuals confront and reshape their internal narratives. This episode provides invaluable takeaways for listeners, emphasizing the necessity of cultivating a resilient mindset to thrive in the fast-paced startup landscape.

Alicia’s personal journey adds another layer of depth to the discussion, as she shares her own experiences overcoming adversity. Her story serves as a testament to the power of resilience and the importance of inner work in achieving outer success. The exchange culminates in a compelling call to action for entrepreneurs to invest in their mindset, as doing so is critical for navigating the complexities of startup life. This episode not only offers practical advice but also inspires listeners to harness their potential by reshaping their beliefs and attitudes toward success.

Takeaways:

• Mindset is crucial for entrepreneurs, as it influences beliefs, behaviors, and outcomes in business.
• Imposter syndrome often hinders technically skilled founders from stepping into leadership roles like CEO.
• Deep self-reflection and personal growth are essential for overcoming limiting beliefs and achieving success.
• The subconscious mind operates like software, which can be reprogrammed to align with desired outcomes.
• Building grit can be developed through persistence and a willingness to face challenges head-on.
• Group dynamics within founding teams can create conflicts that require careful management and resolution.

Sound Bites

"Mindset determines our behaviors and results."

"I help clients identify limiting beliefs."

"Imposter syndrome is an umbrella term for insecurity."

Links

Alicia’s website: www.aliciacramer.com 

Alicia on Facebook: www.facebook.com/aliciadcramer

Alicia on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/aliciacramer 

Alicia on YouTube: www.youtube.com/@acintl

Alicia on Twitter: www.twitter.com/aliciacramer 

Alicia on Instagram: www.instagram.com/acintl.us 

Please leave us a review: https://podchaser.com/DesigningSuccessfulStartups

Tech Startup Toolkit (book): https://www.amazon.com/Tech-Startup-Toolkit-launch-strong/dp/1633438422/

Site with all podcasts: https://jothyrosenberg.com/podcast

Jothy’s non-profit: https://whosaysicant.org

Jothy’s TEDx talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNtOawXAx5A

Hello, I'm Jathi Rosenberg, host of the designing successful startups podcast, where today's guest is Alicia Kramer.

None of them has anything except imposter syndrome when it comes to putting their hand up and saying, okay, I'll be the CEO.

Give us a little bit of a sense of your thoughts about that scenario.

You've got to understand how our mind actually works.

Alicia is a renowned mindset expert, an author, coach, consultant, and a serial entrepreneur.

Having worked with hundreds of private clients for well over a decade, from startups to owners of multi million dollar companies, Alicia has an intimate understanding of the mindset pitfalls that affect entrepreneurs.

Her clients include successful business professionals, executives and entrepreneurs who are driven to take their personal and professional success to the next level.

And here is Alicia.

Hi, Alicia.

Hello.

You have a beautiful background that is one of the best.

Well, thank you.

Just to sort of give people some context, where are you originally from and where do you live now?

I'm originally from central Wisconsin.

I currently live in southern Arizona, Oro Valley, Arizona, just north of Tucson.

Is it like a suburb of Tucson?

It is.

It's technically its own entity, but it borders Tucson.

So for anyone who has been in Tucson, you know, Tucson is big.

It's kind of spread out.

And then oral valley is just north of Tucson in the foothills.

I actually spent a lot of time in Tucson because my son went to University of Arizona.

We went down there quite a bit.

You talk about mindset and you think it's a really important thing, key thing for business people to understand.

Can you define what mindset is?

Mindset has a lot of definitions and it is just like everything else, oftentimes completely misunderstood.

For some people, they would categorize mindset as being positive thinking.

For other people, mindset is just some self talk.

When I'm referring to mindset, what I'm talking about here is our beliefs.

Our beliefs and our attitude determine our behaviors and what we are going to create in our life and in our business.

It's our overarching, our overall way of seeing ourselves, seeing life, seeing business, and that determines what type of results we get.

You figured out that this is so important that you decided to build a business focused on this and helping business people understand what theirs is, what they should, what they should do about it, and how it could improve their life and their business.

What is the form of that business?

Is it a consulting business?

Historically, it was more of a service based business.

So many years ago I had a brick and mortar hypnotherapy practice where people would come in, and they choose either the chair they wanted, the recliner, or the couch if they wanted to lay down.

It was more of a conventional hypnotherapy type of service that then began to evolve.

Back then, that was a little bit less common, was doing sessions with clients in sort of a hybrid model of hypnosis and coaching mindset, coaching over Skype or over the phone.

And then I started to do some group programs and things like that.

And now we've obviously many years have passed.

So it's evolved a lot since then.

Now I still do work with a small number of one on one clients.

And you could use the word coach consultant somewhat interchangeably.

I think coach is a bit more accurate because I'm not just giving people guidance.

I'm actually, like, helping them to really identify what are their limiting beliefs, what are the beliefs that are directly contradicting the life and the business that they want to create for themselves.

And I'm helping them to actually shift that.

So it really is deeper than a conventional business coach or even a conventional mindset coach, which is really just using some of like, the more surface level techniques in a lot of cases.

My background as a hypno therapist conjoined with my background in business development and the actual tactical side of business has me getting deeper into people's heads and helping them to actually identify and shift the beliefs and the self image issues that are not aligning with what they want to create?

And so do you tend to set up like regular weekly sessions with people for some period of time, which, you know, obviously they, they pay for, like they're going to a, you know, a physical therapist.

Is it similar?

Yeah, it's similar in some respects, and everybody's a little bit different.

I've had some clients who will come to me for like a couple sessions.

They've got a TEDx talk coming up and they've got a couple of nerves and they want to get up there and they want to have this amazing experience and wow their audience.

And, you know, that's all they really want to work on, and that's fine.

And that's just a little quick fix, super easy to do that type of thing, and they're on their way.

And I have other clients that I call lifers because they will be with me for years and years and years and years.

And I joke, if anybody's listening to me on any other podcast, including my own, which you'll be on, so little plug for that.

I joke, I say people would not stay with me for seven years if they weren't getting results.

It's that mindset of that entrepreneur is the in the top 1%, they're the person who gets it.

They understand things are going to happen.

As I continue to uplevel, I'm going to keep bumping up against things that, you know, I've got to tweak and improve and fix, and I've got to be on my a game.

And a lot of those longer term clients, they're on almost like a retainer just every week or every two weeks.

And so it really does vary depending on the individual, what their goals are, how driven they are.

I wish I'd known about you.

I had to give a Ted talk.

And as you know, if you've been helping people that are doing that, there are always 18 minutes, there's no notes.

You have to memorize it, but you have to memorize it in such a way that you're giving it very naturally, which is like super memorized.

And I was losing sleep, but I did a pretty good job at it.

And I want to put it a little bit in the context of a startup, because one of the mindset things that you talk about is imposter syndrome, which is a really common problem for startup founders.

Here's the scenario.

You got a small group of founders, and in the tech industry, part of startups, that is probably a group of people that are quite technical, and they have a clear idea of what problem and what their solution is and why it's so different and all of that.

And they have passion for it and all the right things, except that none of them has anything except imposter syndrome when it comes to putting their hand up and saying, okay, I'll be the CEO.

Give us a little bit of a sense of your thoughts about that scenario.

When we're talking about imposter syndrome, there are a couple of things that I like to point out.

You've got to understand how our mind actually works.

So we all have an image of ourself, which is based on everything we've been and done up to this point.

So a very technological person has a pretty strong self image of themself as being a technological person.

They probably have a lot of really good beliefs that support them and their ability to create these innovative new solutions that they don't have a self image, necessarily, in most cases of themselves, as being a successful, high level CEO.

They don't have that.

And they might even have beliefs that contradict that they could be a successful CEO because there might be beliefs in there that a technical person is just not a good CEO.

They're not a good executive, they're not good at sales, they're not charismatic, they're not this or that or whatever else.

So now you're contending with a lot of subconscious programming that can create some upheaval.

And our subconscious mind, its job is to keep us safe, keep us alive.

So if you think of using some analogies here that may resonate with our technical people, okay, our mind is like a computer, and in many ways it is.

So you've got your hardware that's just built in.

Our body is going to keep us alive.

Our lungs are going to be, you know, doing their thing, and our heart is going to be doing its thing.

And you can't stay up 24 hours a day.

Your body's going to shut it down.

It's going to do what it needs to do that's hardwired into us.

We don't get to just say, I don't like that one, I'm going to change that program.

There are certain things like, no, friend, that's just the way it's going to be.

Welcome to planet Earth.

You're a human.

That's the way it's going to be.

But then we have this other part of us that's like our software.

We come in just open.

We got some of our programming, they say, from scientific research that they've done, as some of it is genetically passed down.

And I'm not talking about genetic conditions, like health conditions.

I'm talking about your family had a lot of trauma and fear that can get pushed sort of down onto you.

So there's some of that stuff you come in with, but then here you are, and you're an open vessel.

And your parents positions on life, their feelings of safety, security, their feelings of well being and importance and confidence, and then we start to get programmed.

And so now you got all this software.

Much of it does not serve you very well.

And what do you do?

Just like, if you don't like the software that's programmed on your computer, just because you don't like it, it does not stop doing what it does.

You have to actually uninstall that software, and you got to put in the new software that you do want, that does support you and the subconscious mind is largely the same way.

It's just that most people don't know how to do that.

And so what they're trying to do is they're trying to operate a successful life and a successful business with really crappy software.

It's a very inefficient, ineffective approach.

I asked you about the imposter syndrome CEO scenario because it was a very, it was a very personal story.

It was not my first startup, but my first startup.

I wasn't one of the senior executives anyway, but my second startup was five of us.

The whole group was fairly technical.

And then they said, but I, you're the most experienced to me, to, you're the most experienced, you're the oldest.

So we're not even going to draw straws.

You're the CEO.

And I said, well, wait a minute.

I mean, I've never, I've never been that.

I've never done sales and marketing just like you mentioned.

But I said, okay, I get it.

There's nobody else here.

And I went to the first investor of VC in the Boston area and he goes, what in heck gives you the idea that you could be CEO?

He poked at a very sore spot, and basically the imposter syndrome just came to full life at that moment.

I decided, I have got to go.

I can't do it.

I have to go be a sales, go learn sales and marketing, and then I'll be ready to be CEO.

And the second VC I met with said, oh my God, he's so wrong.

You've got the passion, you've got the vision.

Maybe you can't be CEO for more than 18 months or two years, but you've got to be it for that period of time.

But I already kind of gotten pushed in that direction.

If I'd known about this kind of mindset, reconditioning, re architecting, it would have been extremely helpful because it was a very, very bad mistake I made.

We all have these types of experiences and what you mentioned there is brilliant.

You already had some insecurity.

And what ended up happening was when someone hoped at that insecurity, it just expanded.

It became, I would even say in some cases, for some people, it can become traumatic.

You have that, that jarring emotional experience.

And then it almost becomes trying not to get too technical here on the mindset side of things, but it really does anchor that deeper.

That's why one of the things that I'm oftentimes teaching my clients, whether they're working with me one on one, or if they're in.

One of my programs is we program the mind with repetition and strong emotion.

Now, sometimes that happens inadvertently and on things we don't want to be programmed with.

And those are the ones that we really trip over.

So the stronger the emotion, the deeper that program, the more powerful that belief tends to be.

And when it comes to imposter syndrome, which really just is an umbrella term for insecurity, if we're being honest with ourselves, feelings of inadequacy and feeling not good enough, well, we oftentimes have not just one of those negative programs that says, I'm not good enough in this way.

Who am I to be doing that?

We oftentimes have a lot of things throughout our life that just compound.

And the mind is always looking for justification for its beliefs.

You see it all the time.

You look around people arguing with one another, and they're pulling these facts right to justify their position.

And if you look at those facts objectively, you say, I don't know if that's actually an objective fact, but the way that the mind works is it feels the need to justify the belief, and so it will only notice evidence that justifies the belief.

So if you have the belief that, I don't think I'm cut out for this, I don't know if I'm good enough to do this, who am I to be doing this?

Then you're going to start to notice what appears to be evidence.

That guy over there, look at how much more charismatic he is.

That person over there, look, he, you know, grew up in a family of entrepreneurs that written and I didn't.

Right.

That person on social media has got that whole big following.

Look at me over here with my one.

Like, there's so much that the mind is filtering out and very strategically focusing on reinforcing our limiting or in positive cases.

Right, it's reinforcing our empowering belief.

But that's what the mind does, and that can be a lot of negative momentum to try to just stop, and that's why we got to get in there.

And a lot of times we have to actually release the negative emotion that's associated with the belief in order to change the belief.

Hi.

The podcast you are listening to is a companion to my recent book, tech startup toolkit, how to launch strong and exit big.

This is the book I wish I'd had as I was founding and running eight startups over 35 years.

It's like a memoir of my entrepreneurial journey.

I tell the unvarnished truth about what went right and especially about what went wrong.

It's for the founder, the CEO, and wannabe founders of tech and non tech startups.

You could get it from all the usual booksellers and also from the publisher@manning.com.

dot I hope you like it.

It's a true labor of love.

Now back to the show.

Do you ever work in a situation where you work with.

And again, I'm going to tend to be focused on startups where you would work with the founding team that has to work so closely together and hopefully productively and not get into little, you know, nitpickiness.

Do you ever have worked with the entire team as a group to improve?

Yeah, there's a couple of different ways that that can be done.

So there's the actual group approach, which has its advantages, but it also has its disadvantages.

When you're working with a group of people, you're going to have a small percentage of people who are going to get it.

They're like, this is great.

This is going to be helpful.

I'm all in.

I'm here, I'm a team player.

Then you're going to have a lot of people who are like, I don't know, this is just some more stuff that we have to do.

When is lunch?

Right?

And then you're going to have a small percentage of people who are already, they already have a chip on their shoulder, and their intention is to just defy whatever you're trying to get me to change.

About me, I'm not interested in participating.

So whenever I'm working with a group, I'm sort of feeling into all of the different mindsets and energies that are in that group dynamic and softening up that resistance.

And once you get the majority of people on board, it can be really transformational.

It can be very empowering.

The advantage to working with them individually is they open up more, more specific.

Then you can actually resolve whatever their chip on the shoulder is.

You can help people to make some of those more personal changes that they need to make, while collectively helping everyone to see that this really should be a win win situation.

When you win, everyone wins.

When everyone wins, you win.

And, you know, coming at it from a slightly different perspective, but one thing that I have always been, been an advocate for is you've got to get them at least enough on board.

I'm sure you've experienced this, right?

What happens when you bring in a consultant?

Maybe it's a sales consultant into your existing sales team.

Well, if they're not fully on board with that, that scenario that I just explained where you got some people and they're just, you know, arms crossed.

They don't want to hear it.

It's a threat to their ego.

That's why you got to make sure that people are enough on board.

You've sold it to them before you bring someone in, like myself or anyone else, so that they are eager for the benefits, they're eager for the value, because when we make an internal decision, when we feel like we've made the decision for improvement, it's a whole different ballgame.

Then if someone else says, you need to do this.

So a startup founding group is an interesting beast.

Sometimes you'll have just two founders, and honestly, that situation is usually pretty easy to deal with.

But I've had companies where we've had five and six, luckily, never more than that.

But six is tough, and five was tough.

And I've seen founders who, like, absolutely self destruct and take down the whole company, because I've only done nine startups, but two of them were absolutely destroyed by a founder going rogue.

Well, one of them is still going, but it was, it sure, it sure took a, you know, a hit across the bow, and everybody had to be dispersed into the four winds.

And it's, it's amazing to me, and you probably have seen this, too, because it's not that uncommon.

And again, you know, it's a situation where, as I saw this starting to happen, and if I sort of understood what I needed, which was this sort of mindset or some sort of organizational help on the interpersonal relationships of the founding team, I'll just say a couple more sentences.

So the problem with the founding team is that they were there first.

They have a huge amount of stock, so they have a huge ownership percentage.

They're viewed in either with respect or with some derision, perhaps by the rest of the company, because, hey, why are they a founder and I'm not?

So there's all these dynamics between the founding team and the outside rest of the company, but there's also conflicts within, and they all have big egos because they're all super smart, right?

It's just a given.

They're all super smart, and it's very hard to get five or six to all consistently work together day after day after day.

We didn't really have problems until we'd been together for five years, but then the problems became completely self destructive.

So there are a couple of different things that are going to happen for most people.

We talked a little bit about our self image and our limiting beliefs.

The thing that a lot of people don't realize when it comes to self sabotage, and that's what you're talking about here, it really is a form of self sabotage.

And when one person implodes, it's going to affect everyone else.

Think about it.

Somebody's, even if somebody's in a bad mood, it's going to affect everyone around them.

But now, when there's a lot of really strong internal conflict that can create absolute chaos in an environment, so you have someone who is up leveling at a rapid pace compared to the average person.

The average person doesn't really have that type of exponential growth in their life.

They don't.

They get a job.

Maybe they replace that job with a different job.

There's not a substantial change in their self image or their lifestyle.

For the most part, it's a generalization.

But now you take someone, an entrepreneur, it does not matter if we're talking about a tech company or this owner CEO of some other type of endeavor.

The fact is, when you've got someone who is up leveling their life, whether that is in terms of responsibility and how much money they're making or whatever it is, the whole, the whole game starts to change in their life.

And if they have programs that do not play nice with what they're creating, there's going to be problems.

It's going to create internal confusion and conflict and chaos, and that is going to have an adverse outward effect.

Then you add to that the fact that two egos don't always necessarily play nice together.

So you got people with strong opinions.

There is that tendency to just want to defend your point of view.

And now it's a different level that we're talking about, of destruction.

So that becomes more of a defense, defense slash, you know, going back and forth, defensive, offensive position between you and your adversaries, who are supposed to be your colleagues, right?

They're supposed to be your partners.

And it turns into this war of egos, because things are not being addressed at the deeper level, much less the surface level.

But then you also have that individual's internal stuff that they're also contending with.

That's why there's no substitute for inner growth, there's no substitute for personal development.

That's why you hear these cliches like mindset is 80% of the success formula.

Not because action and strategy and tactics and all of that stuff isn't critical.

It is.

But if you're a mess on some level, mentally or emotionally, you don't have the foundation to create that type of stable, sustainable, growing success more broadly than.

Founders, but still in the startup domain.

Lots of people talk about how it takes grit to be part of a startup, and I agree, and I've seen it and I think some investors in my past did not understand it and they advocated for us to hire people who come from big companies and they didn't fit.

And it seems like grit is a mindset.

I mean, it, it absolutely is.

Yeah.

So, so talk about that a little bit from, from your perspective of, of, of what you've seen, you know, grit, mindset.

And, and do people just have it or they don't?

Or can you take somebody who's been working at a gigantic company where everything is different, everything is completely different than a startup and get them to be successful at a startup where you've got to have this different mindset?

Yeah.

One of the things that I frequently talk about, and this is something I see, and I've witnessed this for so many years now, working with business owners, we can see that the mass majority of people do not have much grit.

They don't have the raw determination, the relentless persistence, the ability to keep getting knocked down and getting back up.

There is a small percentage of people, whether it is an entrepreneur, it is a salesperson, it is an elite athlete.

There's a small percentage of people that are so locked on to their vision that they will endure all of the hard knocks, they will weather all of the storms, they will keep persisting in the face of adversity and they will rise to the top.

I do believe that that can be trained to an extent, but you have to want it, because even those individuals that we see that have that grit oftentimes that was developed within them over time, meaning we don't have that relentless drive that we did as a toddler when we kept falling down and kept getting back up because we really wanted to learn to walk.

Most people get knocked down so many times in life that they just stayed out.

It becomes conditioned into them.

But there are some people who have that fire within them which might have been somewhat dulled down, but it's still there and it just has to, you just got to fuel it.

And when you do that, that's a lot of the things that I really focus on heavily in my programs because it is absolutely critical.

It is the difference between success or failure.

We know that the statistics on businesses failing is pretty, pretty ugly.

It's not good.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Eight out of ten.

Yeah.

And what is it about that small percentage of people that gets into even the top 10%, much less the top 5% or the top 1%.

Notice that that is an inner game that's going on there, because we all have the same resources available to us.

Most people start with nothing, so it's all about resourcefulness.

And all of that is.

That's the mindset side of things.

And when someone has a dream, they have a vision.

If they're willing to do that inner work, they can develop that internal grit, using your word.

And it is going to be the difference between whether or not they become one of the eight that fails or one of that very small percent, that 2%.

And then, of course, there's also that difference between the people who are just getting by, because we know a lot of people in business for ten years, which is a very small percentage, are still just living paycheck to paycheck, or they're in the red.

They're just scraping by.

So what is the difference even between that individual who has maintained, right, they see afloat, they're not drowning, they haven't died, but they're, you know, what is the difference between them and the person who gets to those higher levels?

And that is that, you know, that's why we have to keep striving to become that better version of ourselves.

I'm going to ask one final question, but this one's about you, so it's obvious.

But where does your grit come from?

So my grit was developed.

Now, early on in life, I had a pretty rough childhood, and I got knocked down.

And you'd think that most people in my family, I was a lost cause.

I was going to be a lost cause.

But somewhere in there was that fire that didn't completely go out.

I was assaulted, which everybody's like, oh, I'm so sorry to hear that, of course.

Right?

But it became a catalyst.

It became a turning point.

And it wasn't an overnight transformation, but it was the beginning of a yemenite journey of doing the inner work and wanting to become a better version of myself.

And then you fast forward a few years after that.

I got pregnant with my first child.

And then that was a whole nother fueling of the flame to create something more for myself and the people that I love.

And through all of that, there has been this flame burning stronger and stronger for my clients, entrepreneurs, because I've seen the flame in them, and I'm like, we got to do something about that because you got too much potential, and all of your crap is dulling that down.

And you're not living your full potential.

And as I have evolved myself and I've seen what is possible when I'm working with my clients, that really fuels the flame.

And that what you're referring to as grit, it just becomes second nature.

It just becomes like this part of you that you can't shut off.

That's just how you are at that point.

Well, that's a good story.

I appreciate that.

I'm sure everybody listening appreciates what you've been able to convey today.

I know we just scratched the very surface, but hopefully we open people's minds to the power of doing that inner work.

Well, maybe when I'm on your show later this week, we can add to that.

Absolutely.

What's the name of your podcast?

The mind of business success podcast.

I'm looking forward to it.

That's a wrap.

Thanks for tuning into this week's episode of designing successful startups.

Check out the show notes for resources and links.

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This is Jathi Rosenberg saying tTFn Tata for now.