This interview is with Emily Sander, Founder & CEO at Next Level Coaching, LLC.

Emily Sander, Founder & CEO, Next Level Coaching, LLC

Can you tell us about your professional background and how you’ve come to work at the intersection of startups, private equity, and venture capital?

I started my corporate career at large organizations like Microsoft and Amazon – I was on the testing team for the original Kindle device. From there, I worked for a series of small-to-medium businesses that either were or became private-equity backed. As I moved into more leadership roles, I interacted with board members more and more. Along the way, part of my job became explaining to leadership teams who hadn’t been exposed to PE before, what that meant and how things needed to operate. In my last role as Chief of Staff, I was tapped on the shoulder by my former CEO and PE firm to smoke-jump into a portco – it was supposed to be an 18-month turnaround, COVID hit and it ended up being five years. The investment thesis certainly changed and making sure the PE stakeholders on the board and our leadership team were aligned was a focus area. Last year, I co-authored a book on private equity with my former CEO and CFO. We had seen PE from multiple angles (managing directors of PE firms and various leadership team roles) and wanted to share our experiences and demystify private equity to people who had heard of it but didn’t really know what it was.

What inspired you to transition into leadership roles, particularly as a Chief of Staff? How has this role shaped your perspective on business operations?

The Chief of Staff role was by far my favorite role! It just suited me well from the beginning. It’s behind the scenes, and you have a lot of influence. It’s unique in that you see “the whole board” – you are above department lines and can connect dots across functional areas. If operations and sales need to coordinate on something they aren’t aware of, you can bring that to their attention and get it going. A Chief of Staff’s scope is broad; they likely do not have deep technical expertise in any one area (although they may, depending on their background), but they are looking at things through a holistic lens. They are also objective in the sense they are not “for marketing” or “against compliance,” whereas other leaders rightfully advocate for their departments. A Chief of Staff wants what’s best for the company and team as a whole; their job is to execute the CEO’s strategy. So in any situation, that’s their priority.

Based on your experience in sales operations, what’s one unconventional strategy you’ve implemented that significantly improved a startup’s performance?

Let your teams “go rogue” a little bit. If someone sees a market opportunity, an off-the-wall sales tactic, a branding campaign that might work, or a salesperson has an out-of-the-box deal they think they can bring in, let your teams know they should look for these and can go after them. If you’ve worked with me, you’d know this is pretty contrarian coming out of my mouth – I usually like to run a tight ship – but it’s important to try and “institutionalize” creativity and innovation.

As someone who has worked with various startups, what’s the most common pitfall you’ve observed in early-stage companies, and how do you advise founders to avoid it?

A founder has a great idea but can’t execute it. A lot of founders are visionaries by nature, but if you can’t turn that into reality—into a product or service—it’s no good. Surround yourself with people who have complementary skill sets. Team up with a solid ops person, whether that’s a COO, Chief of Staff, or fractional business operations resource.

You’ve mentioned the importance of strategic project management. Can you share a specific example of how you’ve applied this in a venture capital or private equity setting?

Obviously, if you need to build a product or platform to get the company off the ground, you need strategic project management around that process. Don’t waste any “bleed” time; the screws should be dialed in pretty tightly around getting that launched. Now, it needs to be the MVP version – not all the bells and whistles – but it needs to be on a runway and be gaining speed as it goes along. Some founders run point on this themselves, some have a CTO or CPO run it. The one I see missed the most is mismanaged ongoing KPIs or OKRs. This is probably your most important strategic “project.” CEOs either don’t do it at all (disaster), they half-ass it (not smart), or they don’t know how to do it properly (surprisingly easy to address). We ran weekly “Flash Reports” which were two pages. The first had 3-5 KPIs from across the business that you could glance at and get a sense of the general direction of the company. The second was a write-up from each executive on what happened in their department that week – this was 3-5 sentences and sometimes bullet points. We reviewed the Flash Reports every week at our leadership meeting and discussed what was BEHIND the numbers (not just reciting stats) and expanded on anything from the second page that was relevant to the group.

In your role as a coach, what’s the most transformative advice you’ve given to a startup leader that led to a breakthrough in their business?

Understand the phase of the business you’re in—and understand that each stage will require something different of you in order to be successful.

How do you balance the often conflicting demands of rapid growth and sustainable operations in the startup world? Can you provide an example from your experience?

Understand what strategy and business model you’re using. For example, are you hiring ahead of revenue or behind revenue? Both are valid strategies, both have their pros and cons, but you should know which one you’re using. At most companies I’ve been in, we hired behind revenue, meaning sales deals would actually have to come in for operations to be able to hire more people. You can break this down into step-function hiring: “When we have X amount of customers, we need a new customer service rep.” You can start building a candidate pool and watch your sales pipeline closely. You’ll always be a little bit behind the revenue, but you can pull the trigger on hires pretty quickly when you need to.

You’ve emphasized the importance of asking powerful questions. What’s one question you believe every startup founder should ask themselves regularly, and why?

“What’s important?” This helps keep a founder focused on what they should be spending their time and energy on. There are dozens of things they CAN be doing; they should only be putting cycles into the most important ones—what’s most important? It can also help them in interactions with colleagues, potential partners, and investors—what’s important to them? What’s important in the long run here?

Thanks for sharing your knowledge and expertise. Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Two other quick things: (1) A lot of startups are finding success with fractional or portfolio resources; for example, a fractional Chief of Staff or Chief Operating Officer or part-time HR consultant. This can bring top talent in the door while keeping costs low. (2) Agentic AI can help with this too, depending on your business model; if you can train an AI agent versus hiring 10 people in a call center early on, that can be a game-changer.