After Raising Over $140m, Alexi Robichaux Seeks to Create a Platform That Readily Has Any Psychological Coach You Would Ever Need

Welcome to another episode of Action & Ambition with your host, Andrew Medal. Alexi is the co-founder and CEO of BetterUp, the first leadership development platform to connect coaching to sustainable behavior change. Recognized as a leadership and development innovator, As CEO, Alexi leads BetterUp on its mission to enable all professionals to live with greater clarity, purpose, and passion. You’re going to love this episode. Let’s get to it! What is the most significant value addition people receive from being coached? (1:53) Alexi never had a formal coach, but they did have mentors like a board of directors. Alexi was mentoring high school students and sometimes coaching them after school.  However, Alexi was in a position where he needed help, and he didn’t know where to find it. He did not know at the time about 7-8 years ago. He knew he did not need a therapist because it was not a clinical need.  He tried an executive coach, and he tried a few sessions, but the price was astronomical, and he could not afford to pay it. He then tried life coaching, like the wild west between quality credentialing because you were never sure what you were getting. This is what started the idea for Alexi’s company. He thought about how they could help standardize quality help while making the cost affordable to anyone. What their users get from experience comes down to the value is first and foremost found in having someone other than yourself, a trained expert looking out for your best interest. One of the best things they hear repeatedly is that it is someone to help see your blindspots. Coaches give you a different perspective on the same event that may happen and someone to hold you accountable to your values and goals.  How does one stay accountable? (6:09) This is where analogies will use a lot. A personal trainer or fitness trainer is a lot easier to track in some ways, you start to get yelled at, and you will physically see the results of the training paying off, and you will progress to push more weights or run further, faster.   One of the things that Alexi finds challenging with any psychological intervention, whether it is coaching, leadership development, or therapy, there are no physical markers because they are psychological.  They spend a lot of time answer yes to a lot of questions. They build a ton of software to help both the members track their growth and development over time. They also enable 360 reviews so you can have your team’s manager do direct reports, and you can also add your spouse to it.  You then get extra cuts of data over months and years and the coach, and you are getting data after every interaction. The best thing about BtterUp is it has the most comprehensive data set of human growth and transformation related to coaching topics and beings. When you are a member, no matter your organization, you can aggregate everything confidential regarding you at an individual level. You can even aggregate for a population level.  What is the vision Alexi has for the next five years? (29:00) Their goal and long term vision have stayed more or less the same. This is to become the most reputable partner and brand that people can come to, to realize their needs and wants related to realizing their potential leadership development or self-actualization.  They want to create a trusted and credible partner that you can trust your biggest aspirations, dreams, and biggest worries and challenges in your growth and development too.  For the next three to five years, they have focused on pioneering the idea of democratizing access to coaching, and they are now building with new types of interventions.  Therefore they have been spending a lot more time expanding beyond what has traditionally been thought of as executive coaching. They have been adding to their business and now do evidence-based sleep coaching, nutrition, and adding parent coaching.  They will continue to add different facets of people’s lives to the platform over the next five years. They want to be a gym for mental fitness. They want to be a ‘one-stop-shop’ where you can find all the trainers you might need from leadership to parenting to nutrition.  BetterUp BetterUp helps you cope and adapt through times of change. Together with your coach, you can build resilience, find a sense of purpose, reduce stress levels, and anchor on self-compassion to thrive like never before. Resources Connect with Alexi: LinkedIn Better Up: Website Connect with Andrew: LinkedIn