Founder Shares – Grace Ueng

00:00:01 – Grace Ueng

One of the most important things a CEO can do is to set the tone for the culture by embracing and creating a culture with psychological safety. And one thing that they can do is for themselves to be open for themselves, to be open about their imperfections, to acknowledge failures, embrace failures, to use More the carrot than the stick.

00:00:33 – Trevor Schmidt

Hello and welcome to the Founder Shares Podcast, brought to you by Hutchison, a law firm in Raleigh, North Carolina that helps founders and entrepreneurs in technology and life science companies start up, operate, get funded, and exit. So whether you’re already an entrepreneur or want to be one someday or are just fascinated by the stories of how a business goes from idea to to success or not such a success, this podcast is for you. Today’s guest is Grace Ueng, a seasoned entrepreneur, leadership coach, and founder and CEO of Savvy Growth. Known by her clients as both a corporate therapist and a secret weapon, Grace has dedicated her career to helping leaders and organizations unlock their full potential. Through her ongoing newsletter, Happiness and Leadership at Work and signature program Happiness Works, she combines insight from behavioral science, positive psychology, and decades of business experience to guide her clients towards greater impact and fulfillment. On today’s episode, Grace shares her journey from a mechanical engineering student at MIT to becoming a trailblazing business leader, consultant, and coach. She talks about her personal experience overcoming challenges, her insights on creating psychologically safe workplaces, and how she helps founders and executives find clarity, balance, and success.

00:01:43 – Grace Ueng

I’m sort of like a corporate doctor. Yeah, corporate therapist. One client, actually, the CEO, the founder CEO, said, oh, Grace is our strategic weapon because he was thinking about the consulting work I did and then his president laughed and said, no, Grace is our corporate therapist, so maybe I’m kind of half a doctor.

00:02:03 – Trevor Schmidt

Grace also shares her perspective on the power of coaching as a transformative tool for leaders and why building trust and creating a safe space are foundational to her approach.

00:02:11 – Grace Ueng

I like to think of myself as a thinking partner for an individual, someone who can be their confidant because I’ve been in their shoes many times and I can help them think through some of the challenges that they’re having and be an outside, safe, third party thinking partner. Because sometimes for some of these people it can be really lonely where they are. They have. They can’t really go to their board, they can’t go to their peers, and definitely not people who work under them. But they’re grappling with so many different challenges and it’s very helpful for them to have this outside, safe partner in their lives.

00:02:54 – Trevor Schmidt

Is that a role that you kind of always Viewed yourself in or is this something that you’ve kind of grown into, this idea of a thinking partner?

00:03:00 – Grace Ueng

Yeah. So I think even when I started my firm, gosh, now it’s been 22 years ago, our firm was called Savvy Marketing Group, not Savvy Growth. And I can share with you kind of that evolution. So I did focused on what I had done in house because I had headed up marketing for the last few startups, emerging growth tech companies that I’d been with. And even though my firm was hired to do marketing, I would find that overall the leader CEO would end up talking about people issues, overall strategy, sales issues, technology issues. And so I think it probably did evolve over time. So it probably started early on.

00:03:43 – Trevor Schmidt

So what was the impetus behind starting Savvy Growth then? Savvy Marketing.

00:03:48 – Grace Ueng

Yeah. So I had done five technology. Well, okay, so I worked for five software companies after I had worked for some Fortune 500 companies. And when the last one, after the last one ended, I stepped back and thought, this was about 22 years ago. I stepped back and thought, what can I do to leverage the accumulated experiences that I’ve gained and to help with challenges companies have here in my community in the triangle? And that’s when I thought, so starting my own consulting firm is one of the three things I was considering. Another one I was considering was going back in house. Another one was teaching and actually being a professor. And the third one was consulting. And ended up one of my first clients was actually one that was considering me to go work in house. It was actually a large company, but it was an entrepreneurial type of consulting opportunity. And that’s something I also enjoy too. That’s when you’re doing a startup within a large company. So it was actually John Deere. They had a consultation, consumer and commercial equipment division here in Cary, and they were interested in someone to do help them with their due diligence on some of their technology acquisitions, which was a lot of fun. Yeah.

00:05:07 – Trevor Schmidt

And maybe you answered that question, but how did you think about those different opportunities? Starting your own consulting practice, going back in house or teaching. How did you think through those opportunities?

00:05:17 – Grace Ueng

Well, I actually hired a coach of my own. So I’ve had coaches myself over the years. I think all coaches who believe in coaching have coaches. So I definitely had an outside thinking partner working through it with me. So I had that what I said that I am now and looked through each of them and explored and talked to people who were in each of the areas. And on the teaching side, I ended up Doing a lot of guest lecturing and I ended up actually owning a couple of courses both at UNC Kenan Flagler in their MBA program and also at MIT Sloan with their joint venture in Shanghai with Fudan University. And there I taught entrepreneurial marketing, which really fit in with my background as far as the in house. This was quite a long time ago, so I don’t remember all the details, but I do remember like looking at some opportunities. I think that was why the John Deere thing. There was some opportunity that came up and I ended up talking to one of the executives there and told him, no, I really want to focus on starting my own business. And then that’s when he called back later and said, hey, what about coming consulting for us? I think the thing that I thought I could add most value from where I just was before was the starting savvy marketing group.

00:06:23 – Trevor Schmidt

Okay.

00:06:23 – Grace Ueng

Yeah. And when I started that, a lot of the initial engagements were serving as fractional chief marketing officer and I would call it chief and crew for hire. So like CMO and then the crew for hire for companies, especially earlier stage companies that weren’t yet ready to hire someone fully in house. A lot of people knew about the companies that I’d worked for. They kind of were hiring me for the playbook that I had done at other companies to help with there. Maybe it could be newly venture funded startup.

00:06:53 – Trevor Schmidt

I always like to ask this question, but how is what you’re doing today compared to what you thought you would be doing when you were a kid?

00:07:00 – Grace Ueng

Oh yeah, really different. I grew up in Atlanta and the children of my parents were from China. They were able to escape communist China. They came to America with nothing. So they left their life that they knew behind and came here to make a better life and grew up. My dad taught at Georgia Tech, so my mom was a piano teacher. So my sister was a pianist. She is a professional pianist now. She went to Juilliard and was very accomplished in performance. And then there was me who my dad would try to brainwash me and bring home engineering magazines like engineering career type magazines, thinking, oh, Grace, Will. He didn’t say this, but I think through his actions and subliminally and maybe just being a daughter of Chinese immigrants, I thought, oh, I’m supposed to be an engineer. So I accepted my admissions to mit. Kind of like I was thinking I was going to please my dad. And I started taking some mechanical engineering courses thinking that was kind of close to what my dad studied again being this good Chinese daughter. And I tried to like it. I did not like it. I ended up taking classes at the Sloan School of management at MIT and I remember taking 15301, which was organizational behavior. And I just loved it, loved it, loved it. Which is kind of interesting because now a lot of the work that my firm does is organizational behavior, organizational design, because of coaching and whatnot. I also took courses in marketing and really liked it. So. And I remember calling my parents. I think it was sophomore year, I called them and said, hey, I have some news for you. I said, I’m not going to be studying engineering. And those are pregnant paws. My dad said, we still love you. So I can say it wasn’t what I expected. I actually thought, oh, I’m going to be engineering pre med. Because I actually, during high school, thought I wanted to be a doctor. And so that idea was squashed after organic chemistry freshman year. But I like to say now that I’m sort of like a corporate doctor, corporate therapist. One client, actually, the CEO, the founder CEO said, oh, Grace is our strategic weapon. Because he was thinking about the consulting work I did. And then his president laughed and said, no, Grace is our corporate therapist. So maybe I’m kind of half a doctor.

00:09:23 – Trevor Schmidt

There you go. You know, we all need, I think, therapy in some respects. And I think all businesses need a little corporate therapist.

00:09:29 – Grace Ueng

And I work with a lot of engineers and I have a lot of respect for people who are engineers, having gone to an engineering school and then being around so many, so. So maybe I did half that too.

00:09:40 – Trevor Schmidt

There you go.

00:09:41 – Grace Ueng

Well, you know, brought engineering talent, engineering innovations to market.

00:09:45 – Trevor Schmidt

I was gonna say sometimes it’s a journey to really identify our gifts and where we’re supposed to be and doing that.

00:09:50 – Grace Ueng

Yeah, yeah, that’s true.

00:09:51 – Trevor Schmidt

So a lot of our listeners tend to be, you know, startup founders or people kind of operating in that startup run. It sounds like you have been involved with a few startups kind of over your career. Can you talk a little bit about, you know, what your experience has been in that space?

00:10:04 – Grace Ueng

Yeah. So have worked with a range of startups because startups can mean so many things to so many people. It could be two people in a garage, as in house executive. I’ve ranged from 30 people to 400 people. The 400 people being together soft and the 30 on the lowest. And for clients, probably some of my clients have been like one person, an idea. Two large global Fortune D500 companies, as I mentioned, like John Deere, for instance, it was the startup corporate development within a large company which has been A lot of fun. And I would say that from all those experiences, the companies that thrive, they do the best are those that were the founder is very passionate, very articulate about that passion, is able to bring other people along and inspire those people to join.

00:10:58 – Trevor Schmidt

Yeah, well. And do you find this may kind of intersect with some of your coaching work, but do you find that that type of founder, that that’s a natural ability, or do you find a lot of these founders have to kind of grow in that ability to be that leader, to be that passionate kind of driving force behind the company?

00:11:14 – Grace Ueng

Yeah. Yeah. So I’ve definitely worked with leaders who have grown and changed. I’m thinking about one leader who was quite quiet when I first started working with her founder CEO and actually took herself out of the CEO position because she was thinking she was more technical, but then ended up coming back when that person didn’t work out and really kind of blossomed in being. Because a founder CEO needs to be, in most cases, the external face for the company and the spokesperson. And so what I’ve seen in that case and in some other cases is for their people and for what they’re doing for their investors and for their people and for themselves, because it’s something, it can be their baby that they’re launching and taking to market and taking to. A lot of people, they may get out, step outside of their comfort zone and do things that they need to do in order for their company to be successful because they’re smart enough to realize that maybe their natural state, their natural personality, maybe if they’re introverted or would rather be alone and not be talking to all these people and be the spokesperson, but they realize it’s not for their ego. Like some people say, oh, I don’t want attention, but it’s actually, it’s actually selfless to do it. It’s actually the opposite of what some see, some CS says, oh, I don’t want all that, because I don’t. It’s not about me. But you’re doing it for your company, which is your employees. And I’ve in like this client, for instance, in earlier stages, she didn’t take a salary because they were going through some tough times, but she did all this for her company to be successful.

00:12:52 – Trevor Schmidt

Yeah, well, and it’s interesting sometimes to try to divide out that me versus the company versus that dichotomy of really identifying where one ends and one begins sometimes.

00:13:03 – Grace Ueng

Yeah, yeah. So I think some people definitely are naturally the way they are, but I definitely think some people aren’t and I’ve seen success stories of where they were able to step over that boundary or that the way they thought they were, step out outside their comfort zone to do things. Because then again, it’s for the good of the company. It’s not necessarily because they didn’t want to do it right, but they did it because they knew they needed to for their people.

00:13:28 – Trevor Schmidt

Now you’ve talked a little bit about seeing kind of a range of, you know, working with some very small companies and working with some very large institutions. What do you see as some of the advantages of one versus the other? I mean, where do you see, I don’t know, benefits for the company, Benefits for the people working for it.

00:13:43 – Grace Ueng

Yeah. So I really loved entrepreneurship. As I mentioned, for instance, when after I worked for Bain & Co. Consulting firm out of college, I went and worked in publishing in New York City. I worked for Time Inc. Which has changed the whole world of publishing. I worked at Sports Illustrated when it was big, big brand in their go go days. And I actually did new business development for them, which was a lot of fun. Within their consumer marketing circulation group, I was responsible for helping to develop a new catalog for them to leverage all their existing customers. They had millions. They had a very large subscriber file. One of my roles was the buyer for the catalog. And it was all these entrepreneurs, these people with all these new ideas, they would come and pitch me. I’m this 20, very young person, 23 year old, sitting in this office in midtown Rockefeller Center. And so it’s because, not me personally, it’s not gray zone, but it’s because of Time Inc. And Sports Illustrated, because I’m representing a big brand that had a lot of power then. And so just because of our brand, we had so much interest. We also were able to take advantage of all the archives of Time Inc. I remember going to Life magazine and going through all their black and white, all their lithography, all the most beautiful moments in sports. So we had so many assets that I could pull from, I could imagine and be creative and innovative. I could create whatever, if whatever myself and our team decided to do because we had so many neat assets and people would want to come meet with us like if we, we got our calls answered. So. So that was really neat. And of course there’s a lot of fringe, nice benefits of going to cool events. So I would say that’s some of the advantages because you have the assets of the big company, you have a brand that’s well known. I think some of the Advantages of a small company. A startup is you matter. What you do can make a huge difference. Huge, huge difference. Your decision can make or break a company. So it’s actually kind of scary. But what you do can totally change a company. For instance, the first smaller company I worked for after I left Clorox, I was actually gonna go back to General Mills. Cause we were relocating back to the Midwest, to Minneapolis. And my sponsor at General Mills gave me a job back. Because I had worked at General Mills out of business school. And at the last minute, I got a call from a recruiter. I still remember his name, David Silver. And he wanted me to consider this opportunity to go and start the consumer channel and run product management for a company that just gone public. It was a couple hundred people. And many of your listeners may not recognize the name of the company. It’s mecc. Mec Minnesota Educational Computing Corporation. But they might know some of the products. We were the makers of the Oregon Trail series.

00:16:31 – Trevor Schmidt

Get out. Okay.

00:16:32 – Grace Ueng

Yeah. And so those were really popular in schools. Big installed base. But they only. They were schoolteachers. The tagline was for the love of learning. And it was just so cool. So he sent me a copy of the S1 because they were all paper based then. And I read it cover to cover on a flight from the Bay Area to the Twin Cities. And you’ve probably worked on some S1s. They’re not necessarily like enjoyable reading.

00:16:59 – Trevor Schmidt

It’s not an engaging read.

00:17:00 – Grace Ueng

I don’t really sit down, but I was. It was sort of like, to me, like a Harvard Business School case. It reminded me of doing the cases at business school. And I was completely fascinated by their product line, by their channel strategy, by everything. And back then, educational software edutainment, like CD ROMs, that whole category was growing at triple digits. It was crazy. It was. It was a lot more exciting than some of the products I was working on, like Clorox 2 and Clorox Liquid Bleach. That was growing like Clorox Liquid Bleach was growing at like 0 to 2% a year. And my whole job, one of my huge jobs there was to manage the cost reduction passport. It was very different than working on this really kind of sexy industry. But you were helping kids. It was glamorous, so to speak, but of like. It was like Sports Illustrated in that sense. But it was really to help people. And they were all educators. And so. And I’m actually answering your question. I know I’m going through a long story, but I was able to make such A huge difference there. Cause I was able to apply everything I had learned at general malls and Clorox and then add on top of that, be creative, be around really neat people, and then, gosh, do all these cool things. We had an exit, actually. Do you ever watch Shark tank? So Kevin O’Leary, Mr. Wonderful. So he and his partner Michael Parrot, bought us. He bought our company and the learning company for a billion dollars. And then just a few years later, turned around and sold it to Mattel for 3.8 billion. So it was kind of neat that I was able to make a big difference. After they announced buying us, I got a call from his office saying that I need to be in Boston like within 24 hours. And that was before online booking of flights and things. And so I called our travel agency to arrange my travel, and there was not a hotel room in Boston because there was a lot of stuff going on. And they ended up booking me in this, like, conference room and ended up sleeping in this pullout bed that had no bathroom. So I went and took a shower at a gym, and then I went to his office. And all he did was say, how much money will it take for you to stay? And all he wanted me to do was write a number down. It was like a three minute meeting. So. Because I was on his key man list because I managed the largest product line. Okay, so that. That’s just an example of something where 200% company. Because I was doing something that was strategic for the company and going into the consumer channel. And I was pretty young. But you can make a big difference applying what you learned when you have the opportunity and you’re given the free rein. Even though a lot of people wouldn’t say that’s a startup, because it was. 200 people had already had their IPO. It was a lot smaller than Clorox or General.

00:19:29 – Trevor Schmidt

Oh, sure. Yeah.

00:19:30 – Grace Ueng

I mean, I knew everybody. Everybody knew me. I could come up with ideas and then execute it. It was just really neat.

00:19:35 – Trevor Schmidt

Now, talk about that a little bit. What are some of the lessons you learned from that experience that you kind of still carry with you today? I mean, is there anything from that?

00:19:42 – Grace Ueng

Yeah, yeah. So I learned that some of the things that you learn from, from some, like the bigger companies, you can transfer, but you have to modify. For instance, I won’t ever forget my boss. She was really smart, and she put me on the floor with the software developers instead of having me sit with, like, marketing and sales upstairs. And she knew that they were gonna be a little bit hesitant about having this person from Clorox come and like, market their product. So I had to learn that I was there to get more children to be able to play these educational games. And I remember one of the developers said to me, grace, software is not like soap. And I didn’t correct him and say, well, at Clorach, we don’t actually sell soap. But, you know, close enough, like any of this stuff is close enough to soap, some kind of cleaning product. And the reason that kind of stuck out at me was he wanted what I learned from that. And I heard later on when I went into some of the B2B software companies and was trying to figure out how to parlay some of my big company marketing experiences to the startup world. Sometimes with really early stage novel technology, consumers or the business end user cannot even imagine what the future is. I mean, it’s just like Steve Jobs, for instance. Some things that he had, like, none of us could have imagined some of the things that he came up with, but now we do every day. So that’s why they, like, didn’t think that parents or students could tell us. So I definitely, we definitely did a lot of market research, but I walked that fine line of knowing that we could do some things that are pretty out there and wacky, that consumers, our end user, may not be able to articulate. And so that was kind of in a hot. So sometimes people may not realize, but founders, sometimes they’re just making it up as they go along. Like for instance, at OpenSite, I remember my first week on the job, our founder was sitting there. We were briefing. It was either Gartner or Forrester. An important. It was probably Gartner. We were briefing them. It was a really important briefing because we really wanted to get in the right place in the magic quadrant. And he was saying things on our product. And I mean, I hadn’t been there but many days. But afterwards I said, wait, we don’t do that yet, do we? And so we didn’t, but it was in our product roadmap. But he was speaking the future now. And that’s one of the things that I say that founders need to do is they need to speak the future now, and then they need to will it to happen. And I remember my boss, Kip Fry, who’s our CEO at Episode, he said to me, you always willed things to happen, like me, like for our marketing programs and things. So you have to have people who can imagine the future and then a team of people to will that future into reality.

00:22:20 – Trevor Schmidt

I just think That’s a beautiful, succinct vision of entrepreneurship. In some respects. It’s just speaking the future now and then, willing it into existence in ways.

00:22:28 – Grace Ueng

Yeah, So I lived that. Yeah. Because in the beginning I was confused. I was like, wait a second, that’s not what we do. Because never would you have done that, like at Clorox, because. Yeah.

00:22:37 – Trevor Schmidt

Probably had the product tested a few times. Oh, yeah.

00:22:39 – Grace Ueng

So many test markets. So like, any decision had to be so tested.

00:22:43 – Trevor Schmidt

Yeah.

00:22:43 – Grace Ueng

Yeah.

00:22:44 – Trevor Schmidt

I appreciate you sharing those experiences with me, but I wanted to ask you kind of shifting now towards, you know, what you’re doing with savvy growth. You know, talk to me a little bit about, like, what types of companies or what types of executives can really benefit from. From coaching, because I imagine there’s that, I don’t know, there’s that timeline between having the resources to kind of pay for it, invest it, having the real need for it, recognizing that you have need for it. So talk to that a little bit.

00:23:09 – Grace Ueng

Yeah. I think anyone who is open to it, key thing, open to it, could benefit from coaching. And that’s why I’ve been thinking through this coming year and I can share with you some of the work and happiness I’m doing where I’m thinking to create cohorts that are for founders in earlier stage companies because as you alluded to, sometimes it’s more established companies are further along companies that might have the budget and might think to do it, that they think they have the time to do it. So overall, I think everyone can benefit. The key thing is they need to want to do it. In the olden days of coaching, because coaching has evolved a lot over the last couple of decades, the common scenario was that a board or a sponsor would say, oh, this person on their team needs coaching. And so they would be kind of told and they would kind of go along because they didn’t think they had a choice. That’s the olden model of coaching. Now coaching has really changed. The Daily Beast interviewed me a couple years ago talking about this exact fact, about how it’s changed so much. And now some people say, of course I have a coach. Everybody who really wants to be the best has a coach. Elite athletes all have coaches. And actually now at leading schools, they have both the physical aspects of the coaching, but also they have psychologists also on staff to help them with the mental game, which is really important, just as important as the physical game. So now these days, I see a lot of forward thinking leaders. They seek out a coach, they ask for sponsorship from their company, for a coach. Or they might. People have come to me on their own, say, I want to do it on my own, and then it ends up, in many cases, their company ends up sponsoring it, but they’re the ones who initiate it. It wasn’t this boss that came down from above and said, you need to go get coaching. So I think the whole coaching model has changed now. More and more people embrace it and they see how it can benefit them.

00:25:11 – Trevor Schmidt

It’s an interesting shift from almost a stigma to like, you have a problem that needs to be fixed if you’re going to have success. To know this is how you demonstrate that you are successful.

00:25:20 – Grace Ueng

Yeah, it’s really changed in the last many years.

00:25:22 – Trevor Schmidt

Does that change how you approach coaching, or has the coaching always remained the same?

00:25:26 – Grace Ueng

Well, so if it was in the older days when someone was told to, then there had to be that kind of dating. In the beginning. There has to be that, no matter what, to make sure there’s a good chemistry and a good match. But you have to make sure that the person really wants it. Because it’s not fulfilling for me as a coach to work with someone who’s being forced to do it. And they may say the right things in that initial meeting to say, oh, yeah, I want a coaching, but they may be just going through the motions and then it’s not satisfying for either party. My client’s success is our firm’s passion. So we want to be, as I said earlier, like the thought partner, the outside partner to the success of that person. So they’re really wanting it is so important. They’re embracing it.

00:26:08 – Trevor Schmidt

Can you share, not with names or anything, but like an example of the success in coaching, you know, something that stands out for you in the work that you’ve done?

00:26:16 – Grace Ueng

Yeah. So I’ve coached across all different industries. One thing, one example that comes to mind actually is it’s a. There’s a case study. It’s been. She’s talked about it openly. I was asked by the chancellor and a provost of a business school of a university to coach the dean of the business school. And she was very new in the role and she embraced it. She wanted the coaching, and so we worked through different things that she could work on. So what I do first is I do the 360 on a coachee and I ask for key stakeholders and I do one on one interviews with those people. And that’s a really important part of revealing blind spots for a leader. And one thing that I really like to do And I remember one board member said, cause for strategic reviews. I do it for a company. Like, I talk to customers, lost deals and prospects. For a coaching client, it’s their boss, their peers, people who work for them. So it’s key stakeholders, but in a different way.

00:27:22 – Trevor Schmidt

Yeah, sure.

00:27:23 – Grace Ueng

And a board member for a business, a tech company that we were doing strategic review said, I remember at dinner he was saying after a board meeting, he said, grace has this like magical way of getting people to talk. And it’s really not magic. It’s making that person and that company changed a lot of their strategy because I talked to some of their lost deals and kind of found out things they didn’t know about why they were losing those deals to this competitor. It’s making them comfortable. I want to hear from them. People want to be heard. So I’m interested. I really want to know. And so I love doing that. And so with this particular coaching client, I found out certain things. She actually thought she would be better in a provost role, which was the next role, because that’s more internally like a coo, whereas a dean is more externally facing. It has to do a lot with fundraising. But that was kind of the natural needed steps. So we were working on all those things that she needed to do for that. And then there ended up being an opening for the provost role after several months. And so it was really early for her to even be considered for it. But I remember one coaching session I said, you need to throw your. Have you thought about throwing your hat in the ring?

00:28:30 – Trevor Schmidt

Right.

00:28:31 – Grace Ueng

And I was there in person. I traveled out to see her and it was actually commencement. And she said, well, I’m actually going to go be walking with, getting in my gown and walking with the, with the chancellor. And I said, you ready to tell her that you want to be considered? And she said, okay, I just got to make one call. She’s got to call my husband. And you talk it through. And then she did it and she was named the interim provost a few weeks later and then was named permanent. And then we did a case study. And so. And then she’s referred me on to other, another dean at that school, which actually this morning we just had the wrap up call that was one of my calls this morning. So that feels really neat to be able to help someone step out of their comfort zone. I don’t know if she would have done it, so. And it was really neat that she did it. And then it really happened. And it was because of the pieces I put together from the 360. What she told me, too. Where her skill sets were, what her ultimate goal was. It just ended up being faster. And she’s doing really, really well in that role. So I think that’s kind of neat. To be able to help someone, be their thinking partner, to nudge them.

00:29:31 – Trevor Schmidt

That’s gotta be super rewarding, too, just to see people take those steps and to really grow into different positions and kind of find their. Their ultimate ability.

00:29:39 – Grace Ueng

Yeah, that was really neat. I was really excited for her.

00:29:42 – Trevor Schmidt

That’s awesome. So I want to ask you a little bit, because I understand that you. I don’t even know how to frame this question, but talk to me about happiness and leadership, because I understand you’ve got a bunch of writings that you do on happiness and leadership. And so just talk to me a.

00:29:55 – Grace Ueng

Little bit about that. Yeah, thanks for subscribing. I saw that you subscribed. Yeah. So just over three years ago, just actually three years ago, almost exactly. Rick Smith, who was the past editor of WRAL Tuckwire, he reached out and asked me if I would start writing a weekly column. And he did not know this, but I had just gone into remission. I had gone through a really difficult time, a severe depressive episode, but I was thankfully better. And he reached out and I love to write. I’ve always loved to write. And I immediately said, yes. But I said, can you give me some time? I want to think about what I want to write about, because I was actually just getting better, so I just needed time to think. And he said, oh, sure, sure, sure. And so what I ended up doing was I launched my column mid February, so almost three years ago, come this Valentine’s. And I ended up doing a book review about. Have you heard of Arthur Brooks? He teaches. Oh, you haven’t heard of. He teaches Leadership and Happiness at Harvard Business School. And he had just come out with a book called From Strength to Strength. It’s about living the second half of your life, finding happiness and meaning and purpose in the second half of life. And what happened during my. When I was really in that dark place, during my depression, I had forced myself, this was during COVID to log into my 30th Harvard Business School reunion, because I never missed a single reunion. And I was not well, and I didn’t want to, but I forced myself to because I thought, oh, I’ve never missed one. And Lyn Schlesinger, one of my favorite professors at hbs, he was interviewing Arthur about this book. And when he was interviewing him, it actually gave Me, a glimmer of hope as I was in this dark place, because it reminded me of my happiness studies from many years earlier. In 2015, I did a year long happiness studies and my main teacher then was Tal Ben Shahar, who launched The Positive Psychology 1504 class at Harvard University to undergraduates. And it was the most popular course ever at that time. And it reminded me of all that work that I’d done years earlier. And I thought if I get better. And I didn’t know if I was sure because for those people who haven’t experienced deep depression, it’s hard to understand how awful it is. Like I actually wished for cancer. Like I. Cause I didn’t tell many people about it. Like I felt like it. And I’ve changed and I hopefully have helped in this in a little small way. But I thought it was like, you know, it was not something you talked about, has a lot of stigma. And whereas cancer, if you have cancer, you get casseroles. Whereas like if you, if you’re. It’s just different.

00:32:33 – Trevor Schmidt

Like there’s almost those support groups that come out for cancer. You have people that encourage you.

00:32:37 – Grace Ueng

So I said to myself, if I get better, I vow that I’m going to renew my studies and I’m going to help people in this dark place. And so lo and behold, when I got the chance, when I got better and Rick reached out, I reached out to Arthur, he sent me immediately a review copy. I reviewed his book and then later on I interviewed him.

00:32:57 – Trevor Schmidt

Okay.

00:32:58 – Grace Ueng

And then he actually said, oh, Grace, everyone, we call this every week, schools, organizations everywhere want to kind of copy my playbook that I have. Because his course is quite well known, it’s way over subscribed, it’s such a popular course and it’s helping so many students. And unlike Tao’s course, which was an undergrad, this is graduate students elective that everyone wants to take. People are probably around 30 who take it. And he said, I’m going to invite people on campus this summer to teach how they can be teachers. And so I got invited to his inaugural. Harvard Kennedy School houses his Leadership and Happiness Laboratory. And he’s had two symposia last two summers and I’ve been a part of both of them. And all the leaders in happiness studies, Tal, Ben Johar, Laurie Santos at Yale, who teaches happiness and has her podcast, Marty Seligman at Penn, who’s the father of positive psychology, they’re all there. And it’s just, it’s been an amazing experience.

00:33:52 – Trevor Schmidt

That’s fantastic.

00:33:54 – Grace Ueng

So Just one other thing. When I launched the column, I said, it’ll be the greatest Valentine’s gift to me if my coming out. What I mean about that is the mental health challenges can help you or someone close to you.

00:34:09 – Trevor Schmidt

So, yeah, and that was gonna be my question. What’s kind of been the reaction? What’s the feedback you’ve given?

00:34:15 – Grace Ueng

Yeah. So what I have seen is that a lot of people have said, thank you. A lot of people have said, grace, I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you coming out, because you help normalize what I have experienced. You help remove the stigma. People say, someone who’s done all the things you’ve done, you can be open about this. But I must say that when I was going through it, I didn’t tell many people, so I came through the other side. What I’d really like to see is that people who are in that dark place, they. I hope that my coming out and talking about it can help them seek. Help seek community so they can get better faster.

00:34:59 – Trevor Schmidt

Well, I mean, and related to this, because I think, what are some ways that just generally in the corporate world, in entrepreneurship, can we help encourage those who are struggling with mental health issues? How can we make it a safer space to have these conversations?

00:35:14 – Grace Ueng

So with a starting point, I think from the top. It really helps from the top, if it comes down. And I’m real Advocate for leaders, CEOs, founders, to be open. Just this morning, I was on a call with a company that’s actually outside the US where they’re seeking coaching for their high potentials. And I was just asking what some of the challenges are. And the CEO there is not seen as approachable like in their employee engagement survey. The person is very reserved, is not open, definitely not vulnerable. So I really think that one thing, that one of the most important things a CEO can do is to set the tone for the culture by embracing and creating a culture with psychological safety. And one thing that they can do is for themselves to be open for themselves to be open about their imperfections, to acknowledge failures, embrace failures, to use more the carrot than the stick. So that’s something I think a leader can do, and that’s something that I think what I did helped with others who have mental health issues. It’s just opening up a conversation.

00:36:34 – Trevor Schmidt

Well, and I think it’s important too, because I think even today, there’s still so many misconceptions about what severe depression can actually look like and what that experience is. And if somebody hasn’t gone through that they may not have a good understanding about that. So I think those are conversations that have to happen.

00:36:48 – Grace Ueng

Yeah. And so definitely, like, for instance, there’s a couple service offerings that my firm offers that companies can avail themselves to. For instance, one is called Happiness Works, where it’s capital H, capital W. And the works has a meaning as a noun and a verb. So happiness works. So all the exercises and things that I talk about are based on science. So I say the science of positive psychology works, but it takes ongoing work. So it’s a body of works. Like it’s noun but verb. Like, it takes ongoing work. Because, like, I studied this a decade ago, but then also I share my happiness hygiene. I have a dozen different things that I do, and I help teams develop their own. Everyone’s gonna have different happiness hygiene. There may be overlap, but everyone has things that they like. Everyone’s different. So I think that enlightened leaders who bring in these outside resources because they’re not expected to lead all these things, but what they could do is that they could just be a more open person and then embrace some of these resources. And then some of the things that I was talking to you about before we got started was about creating communities, ongoing accountability communities, where they may meet with me, but they may meet among themselves. As a coach, I’m an accountability partner. So I’m looking to create cohorts of communities that they can self manage themselves between meetings with me, and then they can ask me anything. We’ll have ask me anything type sessions. But they can also have their own accountability partner because Gallup did this research that shows that the most engaged employees are those that have a BFF at work, best friend at work. And so, like, if you had an accountability buddy that helped you with your happiness hygiene, that could definitely be your BFF work. So happiness works is something I’m very passionate about. As you’ve seen, I’ve written, gosh, over 120 columns over the last three years on a variety of topics that we’ll use in these different cohorts and I use in my happiness work sessions.

00:38:48 – Trevor Schmidt

Well, talking about these cohorts, I think it’s important because we’ve had a number of guests come on the founder shares podcast CEOs of these startups that talk about how isolating and lonely it can be to be, you know, a founder, to be a CEO, because, you know, you have those situations where you can’t present failure to the board, you can’t present failure to your employees. You have to have this positive outlook all the time. But there’s so much pressure associated with it, so many different hats that you have to wear that it can be so challenging. But to have other CEOs that you can have these open conversations with.

00:39:18 – Grace Ueng

Yeah, yeah, I mentioned that. I was chatting over coffee with Bill Spruill a couple weeks ago and he was, after he heard my update, he said, grace, you need to host CEO dinners because it’s so lonely at the top. Exactly what you just said, he said, and we’ll host it here. And you could definitely be the facilitator and the coach for the group. So. Because of course, in his new role with Second foundation, he sees a lot of founders, a lot of early stage entrepreneurs, and he knows how lonely it can be. Some of the things that they’re learning for the first time that it’d be really helpful to have a safe cohort in non competitive spaces to talk to and to kind of do therapy on each other, to really commiserate and collaborate. The good and bad, you know, the wins and the challenges. And I’d love to. Those are some things I’m looking forward to doing this year.

00:40:09 – Trevor Schmidt

That’s great. I can’t wait to see. See it come to fruition. Um, let me ask you this question. When you, when you talk about happiness, what. What does that necessarily mean to you? Because I can think of happiness as being contentment, fulfillment, absence of pain. Talk about that a little bit.

00:40:23 – Grace Ueng

Yeah, Happiness is. Everyone has a different definition. So one thing I like to say is happiness is not all smiley faces, toxic positivity, and all these smiley faces. It actually turns some people off from like, wanting it to be part of either having someone come in and talk about it. What I want to correct is the misconception that negative emotions don’t have a place in a happy life. Actually, it’s the opposite. Negative emotions are a very important thing to express and learn to express in a healthy way in order to be well, in order to be happy. And so emotional regulation is something that I talk about in my workshops and it’s not easy. And also, young people now sometimes struggle with being so digital. It’s harder to have human connections and it’s hard to express yourself. I think it’s harder now than before. There’s not the natural outlets that there once were. And so I think that emotional regulation is a challenge for many people of all age groups. And so I just want to make sure that people know that being down is a natural part of life, but knowing how to express it, how to get through it and experience it is so important. That’s part of all this wellness, happiness work.

00:41:52 – Trevor Schmidt

Yeah. Well, I appreciate you saying that because there can be kind of an empty happiness or kind of a, I don’t know, just a glib happiness that doesn’t necessarily express, I think, the full idea of what you’re talking about. You know, I’ve heard you say or write a couple times that success doesn’t bring happiness, but really it’s happiness brings success. I wondered if you could talk about that a little bit.

00:42:11 – Grace Ueng

Yeah. So I know when I was growing up, I thought, just when I achieved this, like, I thought, oh, like there are certain schools I really wanted to get into. You know, I thought, oh, I have to make straight A’s. Like all these things like that were so important. And then you think something else good will happen. And that’s the way we’re wired. We’re wired to always be on a hedonic treadmill, that we’re always looking for the next achievement, next achievement, and we’re never satisfied. And satisfaction actually comes from wanting what you have, not having what you want. And as far as the happiness success thing is, so a lot of people say, oh, if I just win the lottery, then I will be forever happy. And a lot of people have this exercise like, oh, if I win the lottery, what will I do? And it’s an interesting exercise to do because it means, what would you do if money didn’t matter? But if you look at the data on lottery winners, a lot of them actually, disproportionately, it’s statistically significant, the number that actually become despondent, actually the percent of suicide. Because what happens is all of a sudden they become wealthy and people come out of the woodwork and want stuff from them, and then they don’t know what to do with their lives. And so it’s not this magic thing that you’ll have forever happiness. So there’s been data that shows, and this is kind of controversial, so I hesitate to even bring it up because recently there’s been some data to contradict it, but there’s been some older data that shows that when you have a certain level of income, of course the income number is going up. That where you have your basic needs met and you’re comfortable, but not like super comfortable. Like you just have your basic needs met. Money above that doesn’t bring you a lot more because a lot of people think, oh, if I just have so and so millions of dollars, then I’ll be happy. So from that, that’s what the thesis of its happiness that brings success, not the other way around. Because I think a lot of us when we’re growing up, we think certain things like high school seniors may think or juniors may think, oh, if I get into this college, my life is set. When you get in the corporate world, you may think, or a law firm, you may think, oh, when I make partner, my life will be set. If you’re a director, you think, when I become a VP or when you’re a manager, when I become a director, then become a, you know, EVP and then of course become CEO. Yeah. So it just becomes endless, the things you want, but you find it’s just. It’s like you’re just on this hamster wheel. You’re always going, yeah. And the flip side is that when you’re. Well, that’s when you’re going to perform the best and that’s when you’re going to have successes. So that’s what I meant by that.

00:44:47 – Trevor Schmidt

No, I think that’s fantastic. And I just think there’s just a lot of wisdom in it and so hard to hone in on it because I think we are in a culture and a society that really pushes that hamster wheel kind of idea. The natural momentum of the schools we go to, the natural momentum of the businesses we’re involved with, often push us to what’s the next thing? What’s the next success? What’s the next hurdle you have to cross? So you really have to intentionally kind of push back against that idea.

00:45:12 – Grace Ueng

Yeah. And it goes back to really thinking about what you have and wanting that versus wanting more. Because you can always see someone who has more things than you or more successes than you. And comparison is a thief of joy.

00:45:29 – Trevor Schmidt

That’s the truth. Well, at the danger of kind of contradicting what we just talked about, I do want to ask you kind of what do you hope for your business and kind of what you’re the new ventures that you’re kind of launching now. What do you hope to accomplish in this upcoming year or next five years?

00:45:43 – Grace Ueng

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So back to kind of that hope I had when I was in that dark, deep place. I said I wanted to help other people. So I hope that all of your listeners will subscribe to my newsletter. They can go to LinkedIn and click the subscribe to my newsletter button. So my last name is U E N G Grace. And feel free to follow. Connect with me. I’d love to hear from your listeners and then love for you to subscribe because I’d love for more people to learn some of these tools and stories that I share from real life and from science. I’d love for more people to read and then share with their friends. I’d love for people to be involved with some of these initial cohorts that I’m putting together. And they can sign up to be first to know by going to tinyurl.com happinessworks grace and they can sign up, just give their name and their email address and they’ll be first to know about some of these upcoming community cohorts that they can sign up for. So I’d love for them to do that. I’d love for more people to know some of these or embrace some of these exercises. And I’d like for them to develop their own happiness hygiene on an ongoing basis and realize it takes ongoing work to be happy.

00:47:03 – Trevor Schmidt

That’s the truth. Well, and it’s interesting and I don’t know if this is intentional, but as I hear you describe what your goals are coming up, all of them seem to be kind of helping other people find a benefit, find a success. Is that kind of intentional?

00:47:17 – Grace Ueng

Yeah. So that’s definitely because of what happened to me. The other thing, the other side of my business, consulting and helping companies. I’d love to work with startups, they don’t have to be mental health tech enabled because for a while I was like, oh, I really wanna work help mental health tech enabled startups. But you know, I’ve got a lot of joy and happiness from building things. So kind of like it’s this virtuous cycle. When you help others, it helps you be happy. And I like building and creating things. So I’d love to work with more companies as a fractional helping do strategic reviews if they need fractional help with marketing, sales, business development. Those are all things that I do enjoy working with teams. So that’s some of the other things I do and other things that I’m thinking about doing. I’m talking to UNC Keelan Flagler for instance, about teaching this in their program. So young people. But I’m also talking to nursing homes about playing piano because piano is a big part of it. It’s probably one of my top three of my happiness hygiene.

00:48:17 – Trevor Schmidt

That’s great.

00:48:17 – Grace Ueng

So yeah, so I real heart for elderly and our youth. But then clients are kind of in between.

00:48:26 – Trevor Schmidt

That’s. I think that’s good. You have a full life.

00:48:28 – Grace Ueng

Yeah.

00:48:29 – Trevor Schmidt

So you know, we are the Founder Shares podcast and I’d like to ask all of our guests Who? Come on. If you could share one piece of advice with somebody who’s thinking about starting a company or who’s operating a company now, what would that advice be?

00:48:39 – Grace Ueng

Yeah, I say do something scary every day. It’s hard to do. It’ll help move your startup along, but it also will help your mental health.

00:48:50 – Trevor Schmidt

So tell me a little bit more about that. So doing something scary.

00:48:53 – Grace Ueng

Yeah. So a long time ago, Randy Meyer, who is a mentor of mine, and he invited me to teach entrepreneurial marketing at unc. Kenan Flagler. He asked me at lunch one day. This was years ago, he asked me, is there one thing you’ve always feared? The first thing that came to my mouth was, you know, I’ve always been scared of diving headfirst into a pool. I had never done it. Like, I always thought I was scared I was going to make a fool of myself and do belly flops. So. Because I just thought he had some deep meaning for that question, and I respected whatever advice he gave me, I ended up hiring this triathlon Ironman coach lady to take me to the Triangle Aquatic center and teach me the proper technique. And, like, I did it like I dove into the deep end. Like, it was really elegant. I actually thought it was easy, but I’ve been scared to do it for so long. And I thought about it that it might be metaphorical about just diving headfirst into anything that scares you. So I think it was metaphorical. Of course, it was literal, but I think it’s metaphorical too. And so I try to force myself to do something scary. Like whenever you think, what’s the worst thing that could happen? And you realize it’s not that bad. And the worst thing that happens is I hurt my belly a little bit and I was in the deep end, so I wasn’t gonna really hurt myself. So, yeah, I think we all have fears and there’s so many things we don’t wanna do, so we just have to push ourselves to do something scary. If you kind of like, give yourself a quota of one thing every day, you could probably make progress by the end of the week. End of the month, end of the year, definitely.

00:50:24 – Trevor Schmidt

That’s amazing. I love the concept. I like the idea of kind of pushing yourself out of that comfort zone and finding. Finding something scary to do.

00:50:31 – Grace Ueng

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The worst thing that happens, you belly flop.

00:50:35 – Trevor Schmidt

Well, I love it. Grace, this conversation has been a joy. I really appreciate you coming on and sharing your wisdom with us and look forward to seeing what’s coming next.

00:50:43 – Grace Ueng

Well, thank you so much for having this podcast and for doing this for our startup community.

00:50:49 – Trevor Schmidt

Absolutely. And we’ll make sure we share the information that you had will be in our notes and hopefully people reach out.

00:50:54 – Grace Ueng

Great. Thank you so much.

00:50:55 – Trevor Schmidt

Thanks Grace. That was Grace Ohm. To learn more about her work, subscribe to her newsletter or explore her coaching programs, visit savvygrowth.com or connect with Grace on LinkedIn. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Founder Shares Podcast. If you’re a founder or business owner and need legal advice, be sure to check out our team@hutchlaw.com that’s hutchlaw.com we have the capacity to help you out with just about any legal need your company may be facing. We’re passionate about the innovation economy and ready to help you on your entrepreneurial journey. The show was edited and produced by Earfluence. I’m Trevor Schmidt and thanks for listening to the Founder Shares Podcast.