Finding Success Through Difference: How Wala Loubani Left Google to Create Coachendo

Hello and welcome back to the Be Well, Do Well podcast.

I'm excited today to have a conversation with a remarkable entrepreneur.

A Stanford grad, and an ex-Googler Wala Loubani is now the founder and CEO of Coachendo, a personal, emotionally intelligent, AI powered career coach.

We're gonna be talking about being different, mingling with royalty, startup mental health, and a lot more today.

Welcome to the show, Wala.

Thank you so much.

All right, so the first thing I'm really curious to talk to you about is the idea of difference.

I read a really interesting article that you had written about how when you were younger being different was actually something that, you felt like maybe held you back.

Can you talk a little bit about the difference in maybe the change that you felt?

Absolutely.

And, thanks for reading the article, first and foremost, and I received a lot feedback and, many, people reached out and, felt that this is part of their story as well.

So suddenly it's no longer my story, it's everyone's story.

When it comes to being different.

I, I think what happened is, I came across this very early, the thing of who am I and how do I relate to my environment?

And we all go through that.

So I went through that at an early age.

I was already at the age of 12, I started asking those in the existential questions and put science on them just to understand my relation to my environment.

And now I see that there are many people who are adults, like in the mid thirties and upwards who are asking those same questions.

My conclusion of difference is that, we always assume that we are similar, but we're not.

we're actually, all of us are different.

You have two siblings in the same household and they think differently, they act differently.

And the difference is less of like how we look, it's more what's inside of us.

And, I think like it's a challenge that is not taken, seriously because we have so many people who have extraordinary skills and they cannot utilize them because they're categorized outside of what we're normally used to.

So that's like my experience with the definition of difference and how that plays out.

Then when you grow up, you start working in companies and they expect you to do things in a certain way when they hire to look for people who've done the same thing over and over again.

But we're looking for innovation, we're looking for people who can tackle climate change, who can tackle famine, who can support us and build a new world.

And that requires difference.

So we need to allow that, kind of thinking.

not the regular thing, which we then classify, this is a norm, this is not.

So that's, that's how I see it.

Yeah, you're totally right there when it comes to differences, especially, with siblings, you see they're raised the same way, same parents, same families, but they're so different in their thinking.

I have two little kids, eight and 10, and they are miles apart, they're so different from each other.

so I'm glad you brought that point up.

from a parent's standpoint as well, There's a lot of things that, I've seen out in the marketplace where startups that are different are the ones that get noticed and get traction.

So let's first talk about the fact that you worked at Google and then you left.

So was there something there that happened and you were like, I need to make a difference in the world, and that caused you to shift over to what you're doing now?

This is a very interesting question.

Google was an amazing, workplace, and it is, as it says, like it is a place where people are very different, they're very innovative, and it is a climate where you get to test yourself to the limits.

For me I left Google because I wanted to spend more time with, with my kids.

So she was newly born and I thought this was it, like I had to balance things, and this goes back to the parenting thing.

if I am a parent and I have a little baby, I wanna spend more time with her.

And I thought that balance comes from, stepping back from high speed training, going into kind of less requirements in the workplace, but that's not the reality.

The reality of things is like you have to learn how to navigate both of them at the same time, and that's why remote work is amazing because it opens up the possibilities for parents to be both roles at the same time.

For me, working at Google was amazing and I left it with a broken heart, but I will have also without.

second thought because I was spending so much time on commuting, and then you have to tackle that with, when you pick up, when you get that quality time with your child.

So it was a great period, but, I think it's much better now because now remote work is here.

So you can work from wherever in the world and you can adjust the calendar so that you are able to have that quality time with your child and avoid that commute time.

So yeah, that was why I left Google.

I felt like I'd saved some time on the commute.

I'd save some time from to spend more time with my daughter and get that quality in tandem with.

Beautiful.

we have, also experienced the same thing where when you've got little kids, it's really helpful to be with them.

But as a startup founder, you mentioned balance but did you find that it was difficult because now your mind was on the startup rather than on work, which you can leave at the end of the day?

Was that hard to find that balance, working remotely, but also trying to run a startup with kids around you?

That's very interesting.

I don't see it this way because, we are four excutives close together.

We are all from different backgrounds, different experience.

We're we, it goes back to that different thing we talked about.

And we're all passionate and anyone who is passionate about something, it's not something you can, you turn off and turn on.

, it's on all the time.

So it is something that when I spend time with my children there is, there's something I learned from that time with them that I can then incorporate into my work.

And we learn all the time from the small children around us, and then we learn from what we watch on TV and we will learn when we're walking, to nursery and from nursery.

So it is that kind of mindset as an entrepreneur, everything everything you hear is the learning, and now you need that reflection time to put it together into a cohesive story of how does this relate to each other.

And I think that's the difference between entrepreneurship and being in a company which does not change the person.

Because when I worked at Google, I was also thinking, okay, this is the challenge we're facing now.

How do we solve that?

And it was constantly on, it is something we have to learn in our way of living now, as well as how do we unplug and how do we mentally become more aware of the moment that we're spending right now serving for dinner.

I need to enjoy that dinner with the, the company that I have and focus on that.

I don't see the line as clear as it used to be before.

That's a great point because whether you're an entrepreneur or not, you're right that your mind is probably still thinking about it, but it's your role or your responsibility to decide where you're putting your attention at that moment.

Now, there's a interesting story that, I read where you and your daughter had an experience that helped you see things differently.

and this is the story of the ballerinas.

Can you share that story with us?

Yes, of course.

and it, many people reacted to that too, and I think they, recognized their children in that.

so I was walking, I was standing by the door and I'm telling her like, we need to leave.

And this was early morning.

I also had my newborn son in my hand.

So come on, let's go out.

And she said, yeah, I'm, I wanna wear these shoes.

The ballerina.

And it was snowy outside, so I was like, no, you can't, like you have to wear those shoes.

It's snow, it's cold.

And she was very stubborn about it.

And no matter how much conversation we had, I could not put that argument forward for her to agree with me.

So I wanted like a quick solution to this.

I was like, okay, listen, if you don't put your shoes on, I'm gonna take your favorite toy.

I'm just gonna throw it away.

And she went back to her room and I looked at her and I felt devastated.

What a horrible parent I was.

And then she comes back, she looks at me and she's here is a bag of all my favorite toys.

Now you can throw them away.

I'm gonna wear my ballerinas and that's it.

And then when I looked at her, I thought, wow, she is expressing herself.

That's what we're meant to do.

And I'm not meant to dictate her on what she needs to do.

She needs to come to that conclusion herself.

And I don't wanna break that spirit in her.

I wanna grow it and flourish it.

And she needs to come to that conclusion that I have in mind.

So that's why I started studying, child psychology, but also that incident, ended with us going out.

She was wearing the ballerinas and as she, we were walking in the snow, she looks at me, and she's thinking, is she gonna say, it's cold change them.

And I can see that she was thinking that, but I didn't really tell her, until she then said, Hey, you know what, it's cold.

And then we changed the shoes and next time she could choose to do it, like she, she would understand that it's cold.

These are the shoes for the cold.

Yeah, I'm really happy that you let her wear those shoes.

A lot of parents would just say no, and, force their way.

I read something from a child psychology perspective is that when children are younger, we try to get them to follow this mold and, we tell them what to do.

This is the way that things are done, but then when they get older, we expect that they think for themselves.

But we're not training them to do that when they're younger, and yet we expect that when they're older.

Were you like that as a child as well, where, this is what I'm going to do and I'm not gonna bend, is that were you stubborn, I guess is what I'm asking?

Yeah.

Yeah, I was very stubborn.

I guess I was a real pain and I was brought up with a single parents and we were four.

it doesn't help to have four stubborn children in different degrees.

I was the most stubborn one, but my mother was a coaching, she is the coaching parent, so she's always been like, okay, how do you mean?

Why do you.

Do you think this way?

and at some point I came to realize that it was, my freedom of choice.

But there is a responsibility behind that freedom.

and I think the earlier we teach that to children and also in the workplace, the better it is because as you said, we teach children and we teach employees and we teach everyone around us to be a worker, and then we say, can you innovate?

but that's a completely different journey.

We need to let free thinking grow.

and how do you let that, I know your business revolves around AI-based coaching and emotionally intelligent coaching.

Can you talk about how that helps employees to grow themselves.

Absolutely.

So what we saw, I is that, you have many people who have certain skills and those skills are not, visible, to everyone around them.

And when we looked at, and when we came to experience coaching, we found that it is that unlocker of talent.

It is that kind of puts you in a position to ask yourself, why am I doing this and not that?

And how did this work?

And maps out your thinking in a structured way and gives you perspectives.

And it goes back to what we talked about the ballerinas.

but this service is so exclusive, it's so expensive, and it's only offered to a small set of people, which is completely unfair because the rest of us who actually need it, we don't have access to it.

So how do you democratize a coaching service, a service?

human related, it's like human to human.

that's where technology comes in very nicely.

And so we are able to look at the, co existing coaching practices, put them through an AI service where people can chat away with a coach that is built with the same principles and that coaches those techniques and that goes to the employees.

And now we work very intensely with remote workforce because now it's even harder, to build relationships to, start working much more effectively and to manage talent, you as a manager, you need to see talent.

You need to develop talent, and how do you do that when you only have a video call maybe once a day, or like you have so many video calls, it's very difficult to get that sensation.

That's why we are tackling this.

It's so hard.

I'm focusing so much on helping the managers, but also helping the employees to surface their skills, but also to build relationships.

Because as you grow up and as you work in complex organizations, you don't perform on your own.

You have to work with other people, and in order to do that, there are certain skills that you need to get by in order to deliver on those tasks.

Is the coaching more on a professional level or is it also personally like building your personal development as well?

This is so interesting because like professionally, if you do well at work, you're happy, right?

You're growing, what you learn, in your life, you have great leadership skills, you also have great parental skills.

Somehow they go together.

if you are great at building relationships online, then it is also easier for you to build relationships offline and with people around you in your personal network.

So I don't see that.

I see that line is very blurry.

So that is personal development at the highest level.

Yeah, very true.

is there something that you've seen with maybe a success story where somebody has had an ah-ha moment as a result of getting coaching where they didn't have that?

Yeah, absolutely.

So we have close to 200 sessions done through the ai now, with the, with companies.

Before that, we did pivoting with, beta testers.

And from those conversations we've had a lot of feedback.

One of the people that worked with ai, coach's AI coach said that, okay, after a meeting I had, I didn't realize I was not being attentive on that call.

Realized that I was not actively listening or giving feedback in an appropriate way.

So I went back to the presenter and said, Hey, I wanna give you feedback.

I wanna hear you out, and I'm sorry I was distracted.

Small things that make a very big difference.

Small things, everyone wants to feel understood, and when you're coaching someone to understand other people, they don't only understand other people, you understand yourself as well.

So there is a clear benefit.

Yeah.

And if a coach, or sorry, if a manager understands that as well, and the employees or your staff understand that there's that synergy right, between how their communication styles are.

Yes, absolutely.

How do I give feedback online?

What happens after that online meeting?

We close the laptops.

Or we just closed the window and now I'm back to work.

And you're back to work.

And I don't know how you're feeling.

How did you take the, improvements, the good things that I just said to you?

There are a couple of things we need to learn to master better, both on the sender, but also on the receiver side.

So that is exactly what coaching can support with.

Wonderful.

Your team is entirely remote, isn't?

Correct.

Do you find that it's difficult from a mental health perspective to work with somebody every day and not have that physical contact?

I personally don't feel this way.

We are, and no one in the team has expressed anything of that.

just on the opposite, we are able to optimize our time.

We get that flexibility, those benefits from working remotely, but we also use our own product in order to, can become better at resolving, not issues, but resolving different challenges that we can we face as a team.

We tend to meet like once every six months, to get, some physical time together.

But again, like the relationship is built online, relationships are built because we work together, we achieve together, we support each other, we challenge each other.

and that's where it happens.

And then we meet and that's for, socializing.

And that's more kind of fun.

How do you celebrate wins, in a remote environment.

Oh, there are so many ways.

you have online meeting, to celebrate that you have, we use Slack and communicate through that.

you can send funny memes. And that's really nice because that breaks the, everything has to be structured, everything has to be around a certain topic.

Now you can have fun and you can have humor, in the remote environment.

I love that.

It's, for us, when we started working remote, it was a bit challenging because I was so used to having physical presence and taking coffee breaks and walking around.

You lose that in-person touch, but then you gain a lot more because like you said, you've got that time freedom where you can send a message, you don't have to get a response immediately, and then you come back and you see something funny or something playful.

Now, as a parent, do you have any, productivity tips to get work done when you've also got children around you as well?

Yeah, I think, what's most important is to be present when you have time with your children.

And that goes back to mentally, blocking time and being present with the children.

I read the study that more than 60% of parents feel guilty because they don't spend enough time with their children.

And we always feel guilty as parents about everything.

I forgot the shoes.

I forgot the food.

They shouldn't eat sugar.

They shouldn't eat salt.

It's like all of those things.

It's very difficult to be a parent.

But the best thing we can give them is an undivided attention, and it doesn't have to be too long.

So what I do is I have a sacred time with my children every day, a minimum of half an hour with every child or with them together where we just play or we just do things that they like.

And also my daughter is in school now, so we have like study time together and that's what I think is the best thing you can do.

You don't have to spend all day, but you have to be present the moment you're there with.

That's, I avoid the phone.

Like seriously.

The phone is such a source of anxiety, I think, for parents cuz it's so easy to check in every day.

In fact, one of the things that I did is I turned off on my phone, there's a, I think they call it always on, so you can like, see notifications regardless of if the phone is on, I turn that off, notifications off disconnected all my social media apps.

And it's been so good.

And so I'm curious about this 30 minutes.

During that 30 minutes, is it like whatever the child wants to do, you just read, play with them, cook with them, that sort of thing?

Yes, it's their terms, but also it's their words.

What's even more important, and that's what you learn from coaching too, is that, as parents and also like managers, them to do that and teachers and everyone is is trying to do that.

Teach what you should think, teach, tell you what you should do.

those 30 minutes and that time, which is a holy time.

of course like I spend much more than 30 minutes with my, but there is a 30 minute where it says their command.

In those times, it's them talking and I would not tell them what to do or not to do.

I would ask like, why do you think so?

Why does this happen?

How do you wanna do about that?

And they express themselves and they tell me what I should do.

And that is a completely different kind of setup.

And I think that helps the children to express themselves.

And that's very important.

As a parent that's the best thing you can give.

Oh, that's lovely.

parents often force their opinions on kids and then they become managers of kids.

And I like how you've just structured it where let the child do what they want.

it's their time.

Do you have a wellness routine to help keep you grounded when things get shaken up?

Yeah, I think, it's, as we work remotely and you're sitting by the laptop and a whole day can go, and you're we're so passionate.

So we're ending up like in front of computers for way too long.

I'd like to start my day with, morning run, just to get that physics up and to take short breaks.

And we have coaching sessions about meetings when you go back to back meetings that your brain is actually not working, or between those meetings it's tired, you need to rest.

So having those 15 minute breaks at the minimum, and then getting that kind of check in and having a walk and talk.

The benefits of remote work, you can walk and talk.

You can have a meeting as on the go.

You can be, in the park.

so it's that kind of thing.

It's very important not to sit in one office in one room all day long.

That's, and it's difficult to break that, but that, that creates some discipline.

Yeah.

Yeah you obviously have a lot of passion.

I can feel the passion in what you're saying.

Is there something that you're working on right now that's got you really excited?

I love what we're doing and I love the team that I'm working with.

We're all very passionate about this.

We all think differently.

We all have our opinions and our experiences, which makes it, fun every day.

So what we're doing now is we have a conversation with companies who have the remote workforce.

We are onboarding clients, we are testing and pivoting, and every insight, every feedback, every conversation is, something that triggers me.

So the most important thing I think for a founder is to avoid sitting and building a mastercraft that no one knows about and you are just gonna suddenly show it to everyone, is to collaborate with, your users, with your customers, with your colleagues, and that, that kind of thing is what makes, being a founder so interesting.

You definitely embody the work-life balance.

I don't ever feel like there is such a thing, but the be well and do well.

I love that you're embodying all of that together.

that's really great to see.

Is there something that your friends would be genuinely surprised to learn about you that they don't know about you already?

I think this whole article was a great surprise for many people, and I, many people that I've worked with for so long said, Hey, wow, I didn't, I felt like I knew you and now I know so much more.

and it was like, our investors were like, why you build this startup?

Can you tell us about your journey?

Why are you doing this?

And you normally just go by oh,

we wanna help the world.

that kind of story.

but the challenges so much and it was very painful to sit down and write personal piece about yourself.

yes.

Everyone has much more depth in their life.

There is so much more that, we can tell each other.

So yes, they'd be definitely to be surprised, but, that doesn't change who I am and who we are and our relationship and how we feel about each other.

That's the important thing.

if somebody wanted to learn more about you and your work, where can they find you?

I'm very active on LinkedIn.

I am very happy to receive questions, feedback comments, for people to tell me what they find is the most interesting, most painful, most, challenging, and most rewarding.

and also we have our website at coachendo.com to go in, have a look around, see, okay, what does this mean to you?

How do you feel about this?

what questions do you have?

And help us because we're building something.

, that is about changing the way we feel at work so we can be healthier and happier.

Wonderful.

I'll put the links in the show notes.

Is it coach E n d o.com?

Yes.

Can you tell me a little bit about the name and where that name came?

Of course thank, actually it came as a suggestion.

We had, many, many different names before we landed in the coachendo.

But, someone in the incubate program that we were part of said, Hey, you're in coaching.

You should have coach and do - coachendo.

And it was brilliant.

So yeah.

There was another name before, right?

your Kip.

Yes, exactly.

Your coach in pocket.

Yeah.

. So yeah, your coach in pocket.

We were very scientific.

Yeah.

We were very scientific about it.

oh, we wanna transition the feeling and how do we do that?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I like Coachendo better.

I think it rings a little easier to say and definitely easier to do.

I really appreciate your time.

I'm so glad we had a chance to talk and that, we got a chance to listen to your story and you were able to share your journey with us.

Thank you so much, Amin, for inviting me and I hope this, gives, some thoughts, feelings, and, that people feel, hopeful about the world and that we are changing something that, can surface skills that we need.

Yes, absolutely.

It was my pleasure.

Thanks so much again.