a SCK life

i am susan coelius keplinger, a san francisco entrepreneur and avid athlete. i am currently the co-founder of triggit. we make ads personal. i like gravity, technology and awesome people.

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What the Best Bosses can learn from Mountain Ski guides

As seen on Fortune: (http://fortune.com/2015/01/11/what-the-best-bosses-can-learn-from-mountain-ski-guides/)

To be a great leader, first strive to be an amazing guide. Too often folks perceive leadership and promotions as the power to be bossy, or to micromanage their teams every moment. As a 24 year-old founder of an advertising technology company, in an industry and space completely dominated by older men, I learned quickly that by being my best guide, I was my best leader. 

  Let me explain. Some of the best guides in the world are big mountain ski guides - they literally hold the lives of their teams and clients in their hands. The guide’s role is not to ski the fastest or jump off the biggest cliff (though typically they are the best skiers in the group), but instead to empower their people to navigate extreme terrain safely, confidently and efficiently. To succeed, guides work tirelessly to understand the abilities of the group (skill levels, experience, etc.), develop achievable tour plans (considering snow conditions, timing, forecasts) and constantly monitor each member to optimize their experience. A great guide therefore, not only inspires the confidence to take on big challenges and aggressive tours, but earns the trust of their team to get off the mountain safely, with smiles abound.

  Translated into business, new leaders (young or old) will find quick success by sticking to these basic principles:

1.  Understand the abilities of your team and the tools you have to work with.

2.  Create an achievable “tour” plan that considers the expectations and risk tolerances, of your team and company.

3.  Optimize for maximum success by finding and suggesting techniques and routes, while avoiding micromanagement and fatigue.

  There is little more fulfilling in business then achieving success.  As a leader I find my biggest smiles arrive when I can guide a team into completing a project that seemed intimidating and hard at the beginning, but obvious and achievable by the end.  In summation, don’t forget to listen to yourself and your gut, you’ve probably already been a guide for quite some time!

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Question 5: Describe the company culture and office environment at your business

Our concrete floors were painted red (by us) and there was no trim along the edge of the drywall.  Every piece of furniture was procured off Craigslist free.   The art came from searching for the word “Red” on Flickr and Costco Photo Center ($3.99 for a 16x20 print!).   We bought good computers, but our offices became cool out of extreme resourcefulness.

 Today, our offices are bigger, they have that creative brick and timber feeling, but the carpet could definitely use to be replaced. And we’re still cheap with furniture.     But every day at noon the lunch bell rings and the entire staff sits down to eat lunch together.  Sitting down to eat together daily is expensive, but Triggit has become a family by sharing our lunch at the same table.  There is gossip, and weekend planning, but then you hear the conversations about a client problem, or a new product idea, or a new contract signed.      

We’ve grown to be a profitable company in part by our resourcefulness. But really we’ve succeeded by empowering our teams and taking amazing care of our amazing people with the right kind of ‘stuff’.

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A few weeks ago I was honored by Fortune as one of the worlds 10 Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs.   Before this selection I was asked to answer a few questions.  I penned my responses at MaiTai Cabarate (an entrepreneurs / tech folk kitesurfing camp) knowing a session at La Boca was waiting.   I won’t say these blurbs are my best work, but I think the spirit they were written in captures the essence of how I think.   

Question 1: Why did you start your business

Question 2: How are you an innovator, game-changer and ground-breaker?

Question 3: What are some of the biggest lessons you have learned from being an entrepreneur?

Question 4: What is your leadership philosophy?

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Question 4: What is your leadership philosophy?

If you hire great people, give them great ownership, believe in them, and push them, you can really build something special.     This expectation in greatness, and the belief that if you’re on my team, I know you can do it, has been truly incredible to watch at Triggit.  

One gal joined as our Office Vibe Manager and would start every time I said her name.   We needed some help with sourcing and I think she was scared shitless of reporting to me.   And man was I tough on her.  But my mantra day in and day out was “Girl, you can do this! You’ve got it!”.   She’s now my lead recruiter.  Her confidence is amazing to watch.   She has become a fucking rockstar.

It’s not easy to solve hard problems.  If it was, everyone would do it.   And sometimes experience is necessary and does get you there faster.   But sometimes, you can believe and push and motivate a really young person and just watch them level up again, and again, and again.   We’d don’t have a lot of attrition at Triggit, just a lot of people taking their careers and lives to the next level.   

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A few weeks ago I was honored by Fortune as one of the worlds 10 Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs.   Before this selection I was asked to answer a few questions.  I penned my responses at MaiTai Cabarate (an entrepreneurs / tech folk kitesurfing camp) knowing a session at La Boca was waiting.   I won’t say these blurbs are my best work, but I think the spirit they were written in captures the essence of how I think.   

Question 1: Why did you start your business

Question 2: How are you an innovator, game-changer and ground-breaker?

Question 3: What are some of the biggest lessons you have learned from being an entrepreneur?

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Question 3: What are some of the biggest lessons you have learned from being an entrepreneur?

A few of the many things this life journey in entrepreneurship has taught me: 

Just start.    Your first idea will almost certainly not be your last.   So get going already!

 You’ll know when you’ve found something that could achieve hockey stick like growth.   Don’t lie to yourself trying to convince a failing product to succeed.

When it is crowded and nobody is noticing you, try to find a find a space where you can dominate.   From this bulkhead you create an amazing foundation.

Execution matters.  A lot. Facebook didn’t invent social networking, they just beat Friendster, Orkut, MySpace, Tagged, Tribe, etc. 

Hire great people.   And ideally a few experienced ones who can become great mangers and help you scale.

Yes, there is a boys club out there.   And it is annoying from time to time.  But your business plan and your ability to create something that has real value (and ideally real revenue) is the most important thing.

Have fun.  Life is short.  Life is fragile.   And the world is pretty awesome place.

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A few weeks ago I was honored by Fortune as one of the worlds 10 Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs.   Before this selection I was asked to answer a few questions.  I penned my responses at MaiTai Cabarate (an entrepreneurs / tech folk kitesurfing camp) knowing a session at La Boca was waiting.   I won’t say these blurbs are my best work, but I think the spirit they were written in captures the essence of how I think.   

Question 1: Why did you start your business

Question 2: How are you an innovator, game-changer and ground-breaker?

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Question 2: How are you an innovator, game-changer and ground-breaker?

 I am jock.   I love sports and sporting.  I played D1 soccer in college on scholarship and now love extreme things like kitesurfing, big mountain skiing, downhill mountain biking, anything with gravity.   But though I spent the majority of my childhood on sports fields and now require something extreme on every vacation, I’ve also always been a bit of an outcast.    I was the one who as the captain of the hockey team sat fully suited up in the locker room before games clinging to the last pages of my books before jumping on the ice.    I felt most comfortable not chasing a ball but rather arguing politics in my AP classes.   And I was raised in a household where discipline was real, but I was also told that I could do anything, be anyone. 

There aren’t many of us women who are entrepreneurs.  And even less who are extreme athletes.  And yet I am both.   Risk is comfortable to me.    Be it throwing myself off the side of mountain, or risking a deal making sure we get terms that actually will work.   There is something that comes with this comfort with risk that makes going for it, makes starting things easy.   What is the worst thing that happens, it fails?

As a woman I have found that there also aren’t so many of us who are as comfortable with this failure as I am.   Couple this comfort with risk with an innate curiosity about hard problems and solving them, and then layer on a willingness to deeply engage in debate and exploration and you’ve sort of defined Susan.  I’m not sure if that makes me an innovator, a game-changer, a ground breaker.   I just know it works.   And I have a lot of people who want to work with me to make the world awesome.

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A few weeks ago I was honored by Fortune as one of the worlds 10 Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs.   Before this selection I was asked to answer a few questions.  I penned my responses at MaiTai Cabarate (an entrepreneurs / tech folk kitesurfing camp) knowing a session at La Boca was waiting.   I won’t say these blurbs are my best work, but I think the spirit they were written in captures the essence of how I think.   

Question 1: Why did you start your business

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A Very Fortunate Journey

A few weeks ago I was honored by Fortune as one of the worlds 10 Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs.   Before this selection I was asked to answer a few questions.  I penned my responses at MaiTai Cabarate (an entrepreneurs / tech folk kitesurfing camp) knowing a session at La Boca was waiting.   I won't say these blurbs are my best work, but I think the spirit they were written in captures the essence of how I think.   

I've decided to share a few of them with the world over the next few weeks, culminating with the Fortune Most Powerful Women Conference. I hope you enjoy! 

Question 1: Why did you start your business? 

I founded Triggit probably because I didn’t know any better.  I mean, who starts an ad:tech company without experience, and without a technical lead!   Somehow, eight years later, as an exploding company and a leader in our space, it’s pretty amazing to look back at the journey.

 My brother Zach and I have actually been partners in entrepreneurship our whole lives.  From publishing a WWII study guide when we were kids, to selling pins and scalping tickets at the Olympics (making us so much cash we had to hide bills in our vacuum cleaner), to Votes For Students (VFS), a Pew Trusts funded get-out-the-vote  nonprofit we started in college, and now Triggit, starting stuff is in our DNA. 

After college I had shuttered VFS and moved to Chile to be a ski bum, surf bum, and travelista!  Within weeks I had landed a sweet job as a ski instructor at Valley Nevado and was having the time of my life.   Within months I was bored out of my skull.   Zach called and asked if I wanted to start another company with him and I jumped on the first plane out of Rio and abandoned my ambitions of world surf dominance. 

In 2005 advertising was stupidly inefficient.   Big brands were paying $100+ CPMs for homepage space on portals like Yahoo.com, but pennies for an even more engaging ad slot on niche blogs and websites. And there is money in advertising, lots and lots of money.

In many ways I now think of starting companies like climbing a mountain.   Most have been conquered, and if you keep moving there is a good chance you can find a route, but you can also fall off a cliff.  It took us six pivots to find Real Time Bidding (RTB) and we came close to that cliff each time.    

So why did I start Triggit?  Sure, we saw something massively inefficient in the market, but really, I love creating things, especially when they drive value.  I love hard problems and figuring out how execute against them.  And I love working with a passionate group of individuals who love the same.   Today Triggit drives hundreds of millions of raw revenue dollars to our clients worldwide and helps make the Internet free.  To me that makes the world just a little more cool and fun then it was yesterday.

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I love this place. (at JTT Ski & Social Club @ Squaw Valley USA)

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The Day My Avatar Stopped Hurting

I used to be an athlete who lived in pain.  Trainings during my D1 soccer years would leave me crying because my shin splints hurt so bad.   My shoulders existed in a constant state of ache and my back would give out to an extent that the guys at Triggit would simply ask how my “Avatar” was feeling. I lived hurt.  Of course, my rationalization was that it wasn’t so bad, it was just an “ache”.

Still, I dreaded the future arthritis that was sure to set in.   A future that would make me pay for all the fun I’ve had in my young life. I thought I knew the cause, 25+ years of competitive & extreme sports, and a shoulder that was injured skiing in Kitzbuhel when I was 15.   And I thought I had to live with it.  The surgery prognosis was always marginal, and none of the thousands of dollars I spent on ART, Chiro, Massage, Acupuncture, or even Yoga ever really made it better.  My friends would laugh at whose turn it was to give me a shoulder rub, or just press on my back.    But they did it, and I kept chasing it.   Soccer, Skis, Kites, Downhill Bikes.   I was a businesswoman who thought pain or not I was an X-Games athlete on the weekends.

Then my dear friend, Dr. Laura Kearsly had enough.   She told me to get my ass into surgery and get my shoulder fixed, result be damned.  Dr. Belzer sort of couldn’t believe I was playing the sports I was with a shoulder as fucked as it was, but the MRI proved the damage.   

It’s been almost two years since that awesome day.  I’m still in physical therapy with my kick ass therapist Tim Drobnick.   Twice a week I stretch and strengthen little tiny muscles I didn’t know existed.   And little by little the pain has faded away.   The waking up with numb hands clenched in a fist, the piercing pain shooting through my shoulders or headaches that just wouldn’t go away – they’re all gone.   Today, I would call this living pain free. 

Well, I mean, sort of.   I still think I’m an X-Games athlete so I still break myself all the time, but I’m a believer in the power of those little tiny exercises and in the power of Physical Therapy.    Turns out all my pain started in my shoulder on that fateful day in Austria, but over the years the rest of me compensated for the injury.  My poor neck tried to do the job of my left shoulder and seized up.   So it sent shooting pains into my right shoulder and numbed my hands.   Then the discs in my back tried to help, and they bulged and exhausted.  So then my hips kicked in, down into my legs, and finally my shins.   

Next time you tolerate that pain in your knees, or that pinch in your back, and you blame it on just growing old, or think you can just power through the pain, stop yourself.   Ask if you want to fix it, and if you do, try finding a great PT who will really believe in you.  I’m astounded by the results.   Massage is great, and acupuncture makes me smile, but today I believe that it’s the slow methodical work of building up all my muscles, however little, that makes the rest of me work, and makes me strong.  

Best of all, today I not only live pain free, but I’m skiing faster, climbing hills on my bike with power, and playing soccer better then I’ve played in over a decade.  My fitness might be shit, but my body is stoked! I have setbacks, and Tim often puts me back together, but recoveries are faster, the results better.   And I finally understand, it didn't have to be that way, your health is the most important thing, and change is possible.  

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Easy Conversations Rule.

Isn't it awesome when you have a first conversation with somebody and it just flows?   You spill your life story to them in minutes, an hour passes in the blink of an eye, you find them wicked smart and completely engaging. 

I had a fantastic breakfast this morning with Fred McIntyre, CEO of Awe.sm that was just that, awesome.   Fred has a tremendous past, he is hugely charismatic, asked all about me (who doesn't like talking about themselves!) and is somebody I can't wait to follow up with and someday work with.   

Cheers to the art of great conversation and my a couple of my favorite bits: 

A willingness to let the conversation steer itself.  Tangets are a good thing!   And it's always trivial to steer back from said tangent once its been explored. 

A real interest in the other person, and a willingness to listen to their story. Understanding perspective goes a long way in understanding the motivations of that that person.  Fred got me blabbing all about me this morning, next time I'm turning the tables on him ;) 

A belief that if somebody is awesome, that in itself is enough.  It's highly likely that your paths will cross again, and a deep conversation (or two!) goes in a low way in cementing that connection. 

Thanks for the great breakfast Fred!  I look forward to our paths crossing again.  Hopefully sooner then later ;) 

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Waking up here makes me so very happy. Officially reset. (at JTT Ski & Social Club @ Squaw Valley USA)

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climbin' the mountain.  shasta ski'n 2014.

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SHRALP FEST!   whister, b.c 2012

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I'm very excited for the playa.