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Warren Liao
Executive Coach helping Founders become resilient, high-performing leaders
Warren Liao is an Executive Coach and the founder of Liao Leadership LLC.1 He has over 12 years of leadership experience as the Founder and CEO of a global, multi-million dollar e-commerce company called Black Lapel, which he started, scaled, and eventually sold.12
After selling his company, Liao transitioned into executive coaching, focusing on helping founders become resilient, high-performing leaders.1 He is certified by the International Coaching Federation (ICF) as an Associate Certified Coach (ACC) and is also a certified Integral Coach through New Ventures West.1
Liao's coaching approach is based on his personal experience as a founder and emphasizes both personal development and practical leadership skills.2 He aims to help founders navigate the challenges of entrepreneurship, develop resilience, and find fulfillment in their roles.2
Prior to his entrepreneurial journey, Liao worked as an Investment Banking Analyst at Jefferies & Company, specializing in M&A for asset management and financial technology companies.1 He holds a B.S. in Policy Analysis & Management from Cornell University.1
Currently, Liao offers executive coaching and leadership development services through his company, Liao Leadership LLC, which he founded in April 2021.13
Highlights
If you’re a Founder, you ARE an imposter.
So, if you feel Imposter Syndrome, you probably should.
And feeling Imposter Syndrome is precisely the point.
If you didn’t feel that way, then your problem would be even bigger…
You would be feeling stuck, bored, too comfortable, or maybe even unfulfilled doing whatever you were doing before.
Feeling Imposter Syndrome means that you took on a challenge that was way outside of your comfort zone.
That challenge has probably become even bigger than you realized. And you are probably reminded often that you’re even less equipped than you realized.
And that’s how ANY life-changing challenge works:
It forces you to question whether you have what it takes to keep moving forward even when you don’t know if you’re going to ultimately make it.
If it were easy, everyone would do it…
And it’s worth remembering that you’ve never been someone who settles for what’s easy.
Because easy is not interesting. Challenging is interesting.
So stop fighting the feeling of Imposter Syndrome.
Accept it. Embrace it. Own it.
It means you are doing exactly what you’re supposed to be doing.
How do you manage your own feelings of Imposter Syndrome?
#founders #leadershipdevelopment #personaldevelopment
Dear Founder - building your business probably feels like life or death. Because it feels like everything is at stake.
And that is BOTH the greatest curse and gift of being a founder.
Because when we build a business, we are driven by untamable inner forces:
Wealth, a life of our dreams, freedom, our reputation / image, or the feeling of meaningfully contributing to the world.
The curse lives in every business stagnation, setback, or obstacle, when we feel them as if WE are failures.
The curse also lives in every achievement or milestone, when we feel them as if WE are now finally validated.
The curse of being a founder means being motivated by AND living at the mercy of these wild swings.
But the gift lives in a commitment to the belief that we will be better off for having tried than not tried, even if it doesn’t go our way.
The gift lives in those moments when we slow down enough, if only for glimpses at a time, to see who we are becoming as a result of our pursuits.
And the gift is knowing whether or not we like, perhaps even love, that person apart from the business itself.
Because that’s the only thing that can break us free from the curse.
That’s why being a founder means that we are signing up not just for a business journey, but a deep personal one.
And until we recognize it as such, we are doomed to live or die at the mercy of our businesses.
How do you experience the gifts and the curses of being a founder?
#leadershipdevelopment #entrepreneurship #founders
