IAM1033- CEO Helps Growth-stage Companies Attract Investments

Lisandra Rickards is Founder & CEO of Soul Career, Former CEO of the Richard Branson Centre of Entrepreneurship, and a Harvard MBA. She helps executives, entrepreneurs, and high-achieving professionals succeed by connecting them to knowledge, opportunities, and systems that support their growth while staying aligned with their authentic selves. As CEO of the Richard Branson Centre of Entrepreneurship, she coached over 220 entrepreneurs, created online programs for over 2,500 entrepreneurs, built a team of 12, and made the Centre a player in the venture capital space. Now she's thrilled to lead Soul Career, a coaching company supported by online courses that help executives, professionals, and entrepreneurs discover their life's work, lead authentically, and build powerful legacies.

She's also done economic research for the book Superfreakonomics, worked as a management consultant in the Private Equity Group at Bain & Co in New York City, consulted for the Ministry of Finance in Jamaica, and worked in corporate strategy for a Caribbean conglomerate. She has an MBA with honors from Harvard Business School and a B.A. in Economics with honors from the University of Chicago.

• CEO Hack: Monday Hour One method of prioritization and productivity
• CEO Nugget: Thinking about what your team members want to achieve for themselves and coaching them toward those goals
• CEO Defined: Having a broad perspective on everything that's happening in your business

Website: https://www.soulcareer.com/

Instagram: @soulcareer  
@lisrickards 

Facebook: @lisrickards
@soulcareer

Full Interview:

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00:26 – Gresham Harkless

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00:53 – Gresham Harkless

Hello. Hello. Hello. This is Gresh from the I AM CEO podcast. I have a very, very special go-show guest on the show today. I have LaSandra Rickards of Soul Career. LaSandra, it's great to have you on the show.

01:02 – Lisandra Rickards

Thanks for having me, Gresh. I'm excited to be here with you.

01:05 – Gresham Harkless

Definitely super excited to have you on as well too. And before we jump into the interview, I want to read a little bit about all the awesome things that LaSandra is doing. Cassandra is the founder and CEO of Soul Career, former CEO of the Richard Branson Center of Entrepreneurship, and Harvard MBA. She helps executives, entrepreneurs, and high-achieving professionals succeed by connecting them to knowledge, opportunities, and systems that support their growth while staying aligned with their authentic selves. As a CEO of the Richard Branson Center of Entrepreneurship, she coached over twenty-two hundred twenty entrepreneurs and created online programs for twenty-five hundred entrepreneurs, built a team of twelve, and made the center a player in the venture capital space.

She is now thrilled to lead Soul Career, a coaching company supported by online courses that help executives, professionals, and entrepreneurs discover their life's work, lead authentically, and build powerful legacies. She's also done economic research for the book Super Freakonomics and worked as a management consultant in a private equity group at Bain and Co. in New York City, consulted for the Ministry of Finance in Jamaica, and worked in corporate strategy for Caribbean conglomerates. She has an MBA with honors from the Harvard Business School and a BA in economics with honors from the University of Chicago. You're doing so many phenomenal things. Great to have you on the show. Are you ready to speak to the I AM CEO community?

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02:18 – Lisandra Rickards

I'm ready.

02:19 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Well, let's do it then. So to kinda kick everything off, I wanted to rewind the clock a little bit and hear a little bit more about how you guys started, what I call your CEO story.

02:26 – Lisandra Rickards

Yeah. My CEO story is that I was a CEO. As you mentioned, I was the CEO of the Richard Branson Center of Entrepreneurship. And one of the big lessons that I learned there was that no matter how amazing the business model is or how amazing the pitch is if the entrepreneur himself or herself is not good, is not amazing too, then that business is going nowhere. So you could have the best business model in the world, but you have to be a great entrepreneur for the business to be successful. And so with that knowledge, I realized that the individual, the person, the personality, the psychology of that individual mattered more for success than anything else, and I wanted to create a company that was couched in that knowledge, that really pushed that forward. And so Soul Career was born from that.

03:08 – Gresham Harkless

Nice. I definitely appreciate that, and I imagine you got so many, you know, great experiences that you've been able to kinda build from. But when you were mentioning that, I automatically kinda thought of, like, a house. And so many times we try to build a house. We try to jump to the first floor the second floor or the third floor before we take care of that foundation and that basement. And that kinda sounds like, well, that's what you're doing now is helping to support that foundation so that even with that excellent plan and the excellent team, you're able to kind of reach all those goals.

03:32 – Lisandra Rickards

Absolutely. A career the reason that it's called a sole career is a career is just a vehicle. It's the vehicle through which you exchange your blood, sweat, and tears, your energy, your skills, and your talent in exchange for money, status, and other things that you value in this world. And so that vehicle can be a traditional career or it can be an entrepreneurial career, but it's just the vehicle. The person who's driving the vehicle is what matters to get to that end goal that you that you wanna get to.

04:01 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah and so I appreciate you for, making that kinda distinguish distinguishing that, I should say. Because I think so many times, especially because we pour ourselves into the work or if we're entrepreneurs into our ventures or whatever that might be, it becomes hard to kinda divorce yourself from what it is that you're doing. You become what you do. So I love that you're able to kind of, you know, break that apart and probably, I imagine, make that a lot stronger because you have a clear vision to understand who you are.

04:26 – Lisandra Rickards

Well, that's true. But, also, the reason we get so tied or because we get so tied and so identified with the companies that we create as entrepreneurs, the emotion and the psychology and the personality profile of that entrepreneur is so important because the identity is so connected to the business. So that's the unique selling proposition. The value of Soul Career is that we are very psychometrics-based. Everything starts with psychometrics. Whether we're starting with whether we're working with an entrepreneur or someone in a more traditional career, we go deep into who you really are, not who you think you are. Because often, who you think really are, when the pedal hits the metal, is very different. And I can give you some examples if you want, but we have to get to the core, and then we build everything else on that foundation.

05:12 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. Absolutely. I would I would love to hear examples.

05:14 – Gresham Harkless
So I wanted to ask a little bit more on how that process works, and what that looks like, so that would be great to hear.

05:18 – Lisandra Rickards

Right. So we start with psychometrics, as I mentioned. And really often, we find that people are very surprised by their psychometric test results. So for me, for example, I'll give a very simple one that's free online that everyone should take, which is Myers Briggs. I don't know if you know your four letters of Myers Briggs. What are yours, Gresh?

05:35 – Gresham Harkless

ENTJ, but they changed. They used to be INTJ, actually.

05:38 – Lisandra Rickards

Oh, okay. So I am an ENFP turning into an ENFJ. So when I was at HBS, I was at the University of Chicago studying economics and working on Freakonomics, which meant that I was a statistical programmer. I was running regressions and Monte Caravos and residuals analysis, a language that I do not speak at all now. I thought at that point in my life that I was a heavy quant person. Right? So what did I do in undergrad? Calculus, honors statistics, honors analysis, reproving mathematical theorems, honors econometrics. When I got my personality test results that I was an ENFP most, nomadic, bohemian, people person, travel around the world, journalists, influencers, and bloggers are ENFPs.

And I was in a heavy quant career, my mind was blown. I was like, wow. I don't even know who I am. And that really triggered a journey for me when I left HBS. I gave it all up. I gave up private equity. I moved back to Jamaica. I took three jobs in three years. I quit every job that I hated, and I landed in this amazing fun company, which is the Virgin Group, and that completely changed my whole trajectory because finally, my career was aligned with my true self.

06:48 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. And I appreciate you for sharing that. And I think so many times, again, I feel like, externally, we hear that we're something or we feel like it because of the experience, that we don't really do that rolling up the sleeves, that deep work to kinda understand exactly who we are. So I love that you, you know, help so many people to do that and help so many leaders especially too because it's hard to lead others and to be impactful if you're not in alignment with who you are and what you're doing.

07:10 – Lisandra Rickards

And everything flows so much more easily when you pursue a career that is in alignment with your true self. So ENTJ, natural leader personality, but very blunt, very focused on efficiency, not focused on the niceties and, you know, smoothing things over. You just wanna get it done, and you're very direct and to the point. So that personality type is great in a leadership position, is great as an entrepreneur, would not be good in a subordinate position, would not be good behind a desk. It's a very people-facing, authority-driven, leader personality. My personality needs location independence. I need freedom. I need to be working from wherever I wanna work in the world.

If you try to tie me down, I can do it for a short period of time. I was a CEO for three or four years, but then I'm gonna want my freedom, and I'm gonna want that nomadic lifestyle, again, because of personality always shows. So when you match your career to your true self and stop trying to chase after what society tells you to want or what your parents or your peers tell you to want, then that's when the magic happens, and then that's when you make outsized returns, outsized financial compensation is when you align what you do with who you are.

08:15 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah. That's so powerful. I often say that, if you run your own race, you can never lose. And I think so many times we get caught in running somebody else's race because we see, oh, they're doing it this way, so I need to do it this way to reach that same success when really the true gift is in being able to kinda understand yourself, lean into yourself, and be able to excel and reach those, those higher levels that you mentioned.

08:34 – Lisandra Rickards

Exactly. And we don't just do it for individuals. We actually work with corporations, and we do organizational transformation for small teams, so entrepreneurs, as well as large companies listed on the stock exchange as well. So we go inside these organizations, run psychometrics on everyone on the team, make sure everyone is in their right place, and then restructure things and change company culture to be more dynamic and unleash the talent rather than trying to cage and box them in. That's one part of what we do. The other thing I would say is that psychology and psychometrics are just one piece of the puzzle. After you figure that out, the next step is positioning.

How are you gonna position yourself to land that job that is the right job for you, or how are you gonna position your company if you're an entrepreneur to kill it in the market that you have decided to enter? So that's the second piece, and, actually, that's much harder. Positioning is very technical. Right? That's where we get into the nitty-gritty of how to increase your visibility and play the right game. And then the final piece of the puzzle is persistence. How do you keep going day in, day out after rejection, or loss of income? How do you bounce back after getting to the final round interview and getting rejected in favor another of another candidate?

Not once, not twice, but three, four, five times. How do you keep persisting in the direction that you've chosen? That's all about management of the self and managing your emotions through the process. And I'll say one last thing, Grush, which is becoming an entrepreneur myself. I have the training. I have the experience to run a business. What I was not prepared for was the emotional journey that you go on as an entrepreneur, and that is that persistence piece is win or lose. That's where you win or lose the game with the persistence piece.

10:14- Gresham Harkless

Yeah. I I love that you cover, each of those aspects have those, for lack of a better term, kind of three pillars that kinda help people and organizations be able to kinda reach that success because, I read something recently where it was talking about one of the great indicators of success was actually, that persistence or that grit and being able to kinda know exactly who you are, the people who are on your team, know exactly what the, quote, unquote, plan is and how to execute in the strategy.

But you have to be able to kinda go through the ups and downs of running a start-up, running a business, whatever that might be. And that's where it kinda takes you over that level. Because if you have that awareness, okay. This is, maybe going to knock us down a little bit for a certain period of time, but we're gonna get back up. And that allows you to kinda, I think, be a little bit more empowered to be aware of that.

10:54- Lisandra Rickards

Absolutely. And that's called resilience. Right? And coming out of the pandemic, that is the key buzzword for leaders and organizations around the world. How do we help our team members to bounce back? So if you're an entrepreneur, if you're a CEO, you have to be asking yourself that question as well because human beings are not robots. They're not computers. They can't just keep going, going, going, going with all that's going on in the world and that mental pressure that came from the pandemic without stopping, without recuperating, without re-energizing themselves and coming back again with new organizations are finding that they are being forced to help their teams manage that resilience manages that resilience piece or they're gonna lose their talent.

11:38 – Gresham Harkless

Yeah, Absolutely. And I think so many times, I think there's the book that I have that's actually sitting around here where it's talking about how it's so important to kinda be more of a coach than, like, a leader in terms of, like, saying a person needs to do x y and z, but actually coaching to the person and not kinda zooming past that human aspect of business that we so often do. So I love that you and your team were able to kinda help, you know, so many people do that. And so, I wanted to switch gears a little bit, and I want to ask you for what I call a CEO hack. So this could be like an app, a book, or a habit that you have, but what's something that makes you more effective and efficient?

12:08 – Lisandra Rickards

So I came across this method called Monday hour one that was developed by Brooke Castillo of the Life Coach School, actually. I love her podcast, so I listen to it all the time. And Monday hour one is basically the first hour on a Monday morning. You do two things. First, you dump everything out of your brain into a page. So for me, that's an Excel spreadsheet. And then, second, you prioritize. So this is for a spreadsheet. And then second, you prioritize. So this is for the whole week ahead. Dump everything out onto the brain onto the page, and then prioritize what are the top priorities for this week. So I have three categories, high priority, medium priority, and low priority.

And then the most important piece of this is scheduling it in my calendar, Google Calendar, and blocking time for the high priority for as many of the things on the list as I can get done. The reason that is the most important piece is that your day changes so much as a CEO, and so you have to be able to just drag and drop and move things around the calendar because those things still need to get done even when things just pop out of nowhere and need to get added to the calendar. So that way I know, okay, this day I have to be working until 09:10 o'clock at night. Okay. I have to shift this activity to Saturday even though I wanna keep my weekends as clear as possible because it has to get done before next week. So that hack has really made me way more productive than than I was before.

13:21 – Gresham Harkless

Absolutely love, that hack. And so I  want to ask you now for what I call a CEO nugget. So this could be a word of wisdom or a piece of advice. It might be something you would tell a client, or if you have to do a time machine, you might tell your younger business owner.

13:33 – Lisandra Rickards

That word leader, right, it means a lot to a lot of people. And for me, it means not just thinking about you and what you need to do and what the company needs to do, but really thinking about what your team members want to achieve for themselves and inspiring, motivating, and coaching them toward their own goals for themselves that are in alignment with what the company's goals are. For me, that is what leadership is.

14:02 – Gresham Harkless

I want to ask you now my absolute favorite question, which is the definition of what it means to be a CEO. And we're hoping to have different quote-unquote CEOs on the show. So, Lysandre, what does being a CEO mean to you?

14:11 – Lisandra Rickards

Okay. So I have to say something different from my past answer to the leadership question. So being a CEO means having a broad perspective on everything that's happening in your business. So there's a team part, there's an operations part, there's a sales piece, and you cannot outsource any one of those things a hundred percent. You need to know in detail what is happening in each of those departments so that you can have a broad perspective on the whole.

14:36 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Well, Lysandra, truly appreciate that definition, and I appreciate your time even more. What I wanted to do is just pass you the mic, so to speak, just to see if there's anything additional you can let our readers and listeners know, and, of course, how best they can get a hold of you and find out about all those things that you're working on.

14:50 – Lisandra Rickards

Sure. I mean, for me, I am interested in a lot of different things. Right? So right now, I'm in a space where we're creating training programs and coaching programs for companies and for clients. However, I have a heavy quantitative background. I have an economics back I'm trained as an an economist. I'm writing a book. I am constantly learning about physics and science, especially during the pandemic. And so what I want to share with your audience is that you can have a lot of interest that makes you interesting and a human being, and don't just get too robotic. There's so much to learn in this world.

I just see over and over again that people get very narrow, and we need to broaden our perspective. So that's my final thought. Just a little off-topic, but something that I'm very passionate about. So you can find me on Instagram at Liz Rickards and at Soul Career. On LinkedIn, Lissandra Rickards. On Facebook, Lissandra Rickards. I'm not on there that much. On YouTube, we have a great YouTube channel with our own podcast, the Soul Career podcast. It's up on YouTube,dot com slash soul career. The Soul Career podcast is available to all the podcast players as well.

15:55 – Gresham Harkless

Awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Thank you so much. Again, Lasandra, we will have the links and information in the show notes as well too so that everybody can follow up with you. But I think in alignment with your definition of what it means to be a CEO, I think it's so important to have a good range of different, you know, knowledge and information. And funny enough, I'm I'm going through this book called Range now too, and it talks about how it's so important to have a range of different kinds of, experiences and knowledge because that's gonna be those are gonna be the people that help to solve the problems that we have now and have in the future. So  I love that last message. I think it was right on topic. I appreciate you for taking time out and time and then all the awesome things you're doing, and I hope you have a great rest of the day.

 16:30 – Outro

Thank you for listening to the I AM CEO Podcast powered by Blue 16 Media. Tune in next time and visit us at iamceo.co I AM CEO is not just a phrase, it's a community. Be sure to follow us on social media and subscribe to our podcast on iTunes Google Play and everywhere you listen to podcasts, SUBSCRIBE, and leave us a five-star rating grab CEO gear at www.ceogear.co. This has been the I AM CEO Podcast with Gresham Harkless. Thank you for listening.

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