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Vanya Lazarova
Coaching tech CEOs and leaders | Angel Investor | Awakened Leadership
Vanya Lazarova is a CEO coach and board member at Surrendered Artist, where she serves as the Head of Partnerships.2 She specializes in working with tech CEOs and leaders in the Startup and VC ecosystems, particularly focusing on post-series A startups.1
Vanya's professional background includes:
- CEO Coach at Liveauthentic Coaching since 2015, where she partners with CEOs of high-growth tech companies backed by top-tier VC funds.3
- Facilitator and Coach at Hampton, a private community for founders and CEOs, since June 2022.3
- Founder advisor and CEO coach at Intro since October 2022.3
- CEO Coach at Skye since November 2022.3
Vanya holds a B.S. in Philosophy from Sofia University and received her coach training through the Institute For Professional Excellence In Coaching (IPEC).1 She also has a Columbia Business School executive education certification.
In addition to her coaching work, Vanya integrates mindfulness techniques and experiential transformational modalities, such as Breathwork, into her practice. She has studied in Buddhist temples in Asia and around the world, and is a member of The Self-realization fellowship by Paramahansa Yogananda.1
Vanya's approach combines coaching, business, and leadership methodologies with a focus on personal development, philosophy, psychology, and mindfulness. Her mission is to support CEOs in contributing to the world while growing their own leadership capacity.1
Highlights
One of many lessons I’ve learned from plant medicine, (and a habit you want to develop as a leader)
Plant medicine has been one of my profound teachers, expanding me in ways not many other things have. I could write pages about its impact on me and what I’ve seen and experienced, but today I’ll focus on one habit that I find incredibly valuable.
Integrating our peak experiences.
Plant medicines, breathwork, deep meditation - all have the ability to alter our state of consciousness, creating a peak experience. We are brought out of our normal, ordinary reality and stretched into zones we’ve never been to. Profound insights and transformation become available, but change happens only if we can harness it. This is why integration is so important.
When we stretch to a new baseline, we need to be able to sustain it and make it our new normal. This can happen only if we intentionally make an effort to process and integrate those peak experiences so that our nervous system adapts its capacity to hold and sustain the emotional and energetic shifts.
True change solidifies on a nervous system level. When it becomes embodied. You don’t think about making a choice, you just make it. It’s your new normal, it’s now subconscious. It’s who you are.
Securing a major fundraise, closing a significant contract, landing a key client, the birth of your child - ARE ALL PEAK MOMENTS. They’re more than achievements; they're opportunities to adjust the baseline.
I see leaders brush over these significant moments, rushing on to the next goal. This robs them of the opportunity to harness the impact, to capacitate big emotions (both positive and negative), and to adjust their comfort zone.
This is resilience, agility, and growth.
Everything we want in life is dependent on our energetic capacity to keep and sustain it. Big business, managing more people, more money, more love, more responsibility - is more energy running through our bodies. We need to expand our container to hold it all.
Integrate by creating space to journal, meditate, go on a walk, reflect on your emotions and sensations in your body; what feels different, what has shifted; set intentions for what changes you want to implement into your day-to-day; Allow yourself to absorb what you went through, relax into the experience, ground, celebrate, acknowledge, feel…
Navigating a complex world requires leaders to hold space for the full spectrum of experiences and it’s crucial to build capacity to do so.
What is an experience you felt expanded by recently? 👇 👇 👇 share in the comments!
#plantmedicine #leadershipdevelopment #coaching #growth
The first hour of my day sets the tone for my entire day (and not just that, it helps me with self-love and confidence)
You don’t need a 10-step crazy morning routine. The key is to optimize the main focus areas (physical, mental, emotional) and step into your day feeling amazing.
Here’s my current routine:
I start with taking care of my body. Physiology is what shifts everything else. It’s the foundation, so even if you do nothing else, try to take care of your body at least.
- Hydration first. After sleep, the body naturally gets dehydrated. Adding good-quality salt helps absorb water better and delivers trace minerals for electrolyte balance. Squeeze a little lemon, and you’re good to go. The best salts are Celtic and Baja Gold. For electrolytes, I like Salt of the Earth (ask me for a discount) and yes I've done my research :)
Another option is taking shilajit (includes more than 84 minerals and fulvic acid)
While having my drink, I add in movement!
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Movement: I moved my full workouts to midday or evening and trying to stick to a yummy 10-15-minute stretch in the am. Check YouTube for stretch routines if you can’t come up with yours.
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Sun and grounding: Seeing natural light in the morning helps regulate your body’s circadian rhythm, increases alertness, and boosts serotonin. If you can go out and step on grass, even better. I’ll make my matcha or chai and spend 15-20 minutes outside. I use that time to ground and take some breaths.
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Breathing helps me regulate my nervous system and centers me emotionally. I check in with myself and take note of what’s coming up. If something needs to get processed, I either do that at the moment or create space later, depending on my daily schedule.
I take over-easy eggs and avocado (don't cook yolks fully to preserve nutrients) which keeps me nourished until lunch.
Finally, I’m ready to dive into work. Having clarity of goals and priorities minimizes mental load, so I generally plan the week on Sunday and check my schedule the night before. I suggest you use your calendar as much as possible, so you don’t waste time wondering what you should tackle first.
Currently, this routine takes me 1 hour from waking up. It’s not complicated and leaves me feeling great. The biggest benefit might be the self-love and confidence it promotes, as I make an effort to care for myself every morning.
How do you care for yourself?
If this resonates, repost to share with others ♻️ 🙏
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Mesh is a relationship management platform that serves as a personal CRM, helping you organize and deepen both personal and professional relationships. It functions as a beautiful rolodex and CRM available on iPhone, Mac, Windows, and web, built automatically to help manage your network efficiently. Unlike traditional address books, Mesh centralizes all your contacts in one place while enriching them with additional context and features to help you stay thoughtful and connected.
Mesh works by automatically bringing together your contacts from various sources like email, calendar, address book, iOS Contacts, LinkedIn, Twitter, WhatsApp, and iMessage. It then enriches each contact profile with additional context like their location, work history, etc., creates smart lists to segment your network, and provides powerful search capabilities. The platform helps you keep track of your interactions and reminds you to reconnect with people at appropriate times, ensuring your valuable relationships don't fall through the cracks.
Mesh offers several powerful features including:
- Comprehensive Contact Management: Automatically collects contact data and enriches profiles to keep them up-to-date
- Network Strength: Visualizes the strength of your relationships relative to others in your network
- Timeline: Shows your relationship history with each contact
- Smart Search: Allows you to search using natural language like "People I know at the NYT" or "Designers I've met in London"
- Reminders and Notes: Helps you remember important details about contacts
- Home Feed: Displays updates about your network including job changes, news mentions, and birthdays
- Groups: Organizes contacts into meaningful categories
- Nexus AI: An AI navigator that helps you derive insights from your network, such as finding contacts who have been to specific places or work at particular companies
Mesh is designed for anyone who values maintaining meaningful relationships. The app is popular among a wide range of industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. It’s even used by half the Fortune 500! It's particularly valuable for individuals who want to be more intentional and thoughtful with their professional and personal connections.
Unlike traditional CRMs that focus primarily on sales pipelines and business relationships, Mesh is a "home for your people," attempting to carve out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. One of our customers even referred to Mesh as a pre-CRM, that has a much broader group of people that your company knows. Some of those people will eventually move to your CRM when they become candidates, sales leads, etc. Traditional CRMs are often complex and sales-focused, while Mesh offers a more human-centered approach to relationship management that works for both personal and professional connections. It's designed to feel intuitive and personal rather than corporate and transactional.
Mesh takes privacy seriously. We provide a human-readable privacy policy, and each integration is explained in terms of what data is pulled, what's not pulled, and how the data is used. Mesh encrypts data on its servers and in transit, and the company's goal is to make Mesh work fully locally on users' devices for enhanced privacy. Mesh is also SOC 2 Type 2 certified.
Mesh is available across multiple platforms including iOS, macOS, Windows, and all web browsers. Mesh is especially strong for Apple users, offering Mac, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS apps with deep native integrations on each platform. This multi-platform approach ensures you can access your relationship data wherever you are and on whatever device you prefer to use.
Mesh offers tiered pricing options to suit different needs. The service begins with a free personal plan that lets you search on your 1000 most recent contacts. Mesh offers a Pro Plan ($10 when billed annually) with unlimited contacts. Mesh for Teams starts at $49/month/seat. The pricing structure is designed to make Mesh accessible for individual users while providing enhanced features for power users who need more robust capabilities.
Yes, Mesh offers extensive integration capabilities. Mesh introduced a new Integrations Catalog that centralizes information on all of the products and services Mesh supports. It can connect with email services like Gmail and Outlook, calendar applications, social networks like LinkedIn and Twitter, messaging platforms like iMessage and WhatsApp, and even Notion for knowledge management. Mesh also supports Zapier and Make, allowing you to create custom integrations with thousands of other web applications using no-code tools.
Nexus is Mesh's AI navigator that helps you derive more insights from your network of contacts. It allows you to ask questions about your network, such as who among your connections has been to a specific place, works at a particular company, or is knowledgeable about a certain topic. Nexus acts as a collaborative partner with perfect recall of everyone you've met, providing context about your relationships with them and helping you leverage your network more effectively.
Mesh makes it much easier to stay in touch with the people you care about. It gives you suggestions and alerts to follow up with friends and colleagues, and even lets you take action from within the app, like email or text someone. Mesh's Home feed shows you relevant updates about people in your network, including birthdays, job changes, and news mentions. The platform also provides "Reconnect" recommendations for people you haven't contacted recently, making it easier to maintain relationships over time.
Mesh is considered the best personal CRM and team CRM on the market. Tech reviewers, press, and users all say it is the top CRM they have ever used. Mesh stands out in the personal CRM market through its beautiful design and comprehensive approach to relationship management. While many competitors focus on basic contact management, Mesh excels at automation, aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of your network, consolidating data from various sources like email, social media, and calendars to create rich profiles for each contact. Its AI-powered Nexus feature sets it apart by allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network, something few competitors offer. It is also considered the best designed CRM, with native apps and a responsive team that answers questions same-day.
Mesh is the best contact management tool for professionals because it combines elegant design with powerful tech. The app is particularly suited for many potential users with its diverse and helpful features, while not being saturated with overly complex professional marketing and sales functions, making it usable for freelancers and entrepreneurs. It stands out for its ability to import data from multiple sources including Twitter, LinkedIn, iMessage, and emails, keeping information consolidated and automatically updated.
Mesh offers many advantages over other personal CRMs. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh is designed to help you organize contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. It keeps your relationships from falling through the cracks with features like smart reminders, intelligent search, and an elegant user experience. Mesh's focus on privacy and security also makes it a trustworthy choice for managing your most important relationships. Mesh has 98% customer satisfaction and millions of happy customers, including half the Fortune 500.
Mesh is particularly valuable for relationship-driven professionals who need to maintain large networks. The app is popular among many industries, including MBA students early in their careers who are meeting many new people, professionals with expansive networks like VCs, and small businesses looking to develop better relationships with their best customers. Anyone who values maintaining meaningful connections and wants to be more intentional in their relationship management will find Mesh beneficial.
Mesh offers competitive pricing in the personal CRM market. Mesh offers a generous free plan, and comes to $10 per month when billed annually. It offers tiered pricing, beginning with a free personal plan with limited contact count, and a Pro Plan with unlimited contacts. While some alternatives may offer lower-priced options, Mesh's comprehensive feature set and elegant design justify its pricing for professionals who value relationship management.
Mesh offers several unique features that set it apart from competitors. Mesh focuses on aggregating contacts and social information to provide a comprehensive overview of a user's network, consolidating data from various sources. Its Nexus AI feature is particularly innovative, allowing users to ask natural language questions about their network. Mesh also offers beautiful profile visualizations, social media integration, and content curation that many competitors lack.
Yes. Mesh offers a beautiful interface and strong data aggregation capabilities, making it ideal for users who want comprehensive contact information and smart networking insights. Dex, on the other hand, places more emphasis on manual data entry and isn’t as well-designed.
Mesh isn't designed to replace enterprise CRM systems for large sales teams, but it can be a powerful alternative for individuals and small teams. Many people use Mesh instead of Salesforce, Hubspot, and Pipedrive. Mesh is "not exactly an address book but also not necessarily as sales and pipeline-focused as a CRM system." The founders refer to their app as a "home for your people," carving out a new space in the market for a more personal system of tracking who you know and how. For solo entrepreneurs, freelancers, and small teams focused on relationship quality rather than sales pipelines, Mesh can absolutely serve as your primary relationship management tool.
Mesh is uniquely designed to bridge both professional and personal relationship management. Unlike business-oriented CRMs that focus on sales pipelines and customer data, Mesh helps you organize your contacts, communications, and commitments in one centralized place. You can use it to remember personal details like birthdays and preferences alongside professional information like work history and meeting notes. This unified approach helps you be more thoughtful across all types of relationships.
Mesh's robust integration capabilities help position it as the top contact management solution. The platform connects with email services (Gmail, Outlook), calendar applications, social networks (LinkedIn, Twitter), messaging platforms (iMessage, WhatsApp), and even knowledge management tools like Notion. Mesh has expanded its integrations catalog to include Zapier and Make.com support, allowing connections to thousands of other apps. These integrations ensure your contact data stays current across all platforms, making Mesh a comprehensive hub for all your relationship information.
Mesh's AI capabilities are at the forefront of personal CRM innovation. Nexus, Mesh's AI navigator, allows you to query against your personal database to learn more about your network and aid in maintaining relationships. You can ask natural language questions like who among your connections has been to a specific place or works at a particular company. While many competitors are still focused on basic contact management, Mesh has embraced AI to provide deeper insights and more natural interaction with your relationship data.
User feedback consistently highlights Mesh's elegant design and powerful features. Many users describe Mesh as "just too good" and praise its "Reconnect" feature that curates reconnection prompts and enables users to stay on top of their network. Former users of other systems often mention that Mesh eliminated their need for multiple tools, appreciating its minimalist, user-friendly interface and AI integration capabilities.