Judy Schramm is the founder of ProResource, a company that ups executive presence on LinkedIn.
Here’s a fun way to spend a Tuesday: discover that a professional has been studying you.
Not in a restraining-order way. In a strategic way. Judy Schramm and her team at ProResource put together a full assessment of my public brand—the LinkedIn footprint, the bio, the trail of evidence forty years of working leaves behind whether you want it to or not. And then Judy kindly sent it to me.
Now, I have spent a career telling CEOs hard truths they did not order and could not return. I have built an entire coaching practice on the premise that the most expensive thing in any boardroom is the comfortable lie everyone agrees to believe. So you’d think I’d be calm about somebody holding up a mirror.
Reader, I read it standing up. With one hand near the delete key. Just in case.
It was fine. It was better than fine. Which is its own kind of unsettling—you brace for the gut-punch and instead get a firm handshake, and now you don’t know what to do with your hands.
What the assessment actually said
Here’s the short version, paraphrased so I don’t bore you and lightly edited so I don’t blush.
Forty-plus years in technology. Salesman, product manager, marketing VP, general manager for a Fortune 500 telecom software division. A decade as a hired-gun turnaround CEO for private equity—which is a polite way of saying “the guy they call when the building is on fire and the founder is still arguing about the logo.” More than a hundred CEOs coached over fifteen years. Executive in Residence at University of Maryland Ventures, where I still run I-Corps programs teaching STEM researchers the radical idea that you should talk to a customer before you build the thing.
And then there was the part where Washingtonian once profiled me as “Mr. Cranky,” the blogger who spent years calling out overhyped startups and press-release theater in the DC tech scene. The assessment listed this as a credibility signal.
A credibility signal. Forty years of being insufferable, professionally validated. My mother would be so confused.
The line that made me put the coffee down
The assessment’s read on my philosophy was this: know your intentions, tell the truth, validate with customers, face reality, lead with accountability.
I have written an entire book—Intentional Leadership—trying to say that in a way that takes three hundred pages. Judy’s team said it in one sentence. I’d be annoyed if it weren’t so accurate. That’s the whole job, by the way. Leadership isn’t a personality. It’s a destination you’ve actually decided on, said out loud, and then refused to drift away from when the quarter gets ugly. Most leaders skip the deciding part and wonder why the bus keeps ending up somewhere they didn’t choose.
There was also a caveat, and I want to read it into the record because it’s the truest thing in the whole document: I’m probably not the right coach for everyone. My brand is blunt. “No BS accountability” is on the website, not as marketing, but as a warning label. I am very good for the CEO who wants a reality check and strategic pressure-testing and a person who will say the thing in the room that everyone else is texting each other about. I am less good for the leader who wants affirmation more than challenge.
That’s not a flaw in the assessment. That’s a filter. If reading “blunt” made you flinch, we’ve already saved us both a discovery call.
The part I’m choosing to skip
There was a whole section evaluating whether my business is a venture-scale investment opportunity. Whether CxO Elevate could scale, productize, throw off the kind of metrics that make a VC’s pupils dilate.
I’m going to gently set that section down over here, on this table, and walk away from it.
Because here’s the thing nobody on a cap table wants to hear: a coaching practice isn’t supposed to be a unicorn. The value is tied to the human. That’s not a bug to be engineered out—it’s the entire product. You don’t get a software license. You get a guy who has sat across from a hundred founders on the worst day of their company and is still in the room. There’s no SaaS version of that. There’s no Series A that makes me care more.
So—respectfully—the investment question is the wrong question. The right one is simpler: do you want someone who will tell you the truth?
What it all comes down to
The funny thing about being assessed is that it’s a small dose of your own medicine. I make my living holdingJudy Schramm is the founder of ProResource, a company that ups executive presence on LinkedIn.
Here’s a fun way to spend a Tuesday: discover that a professional has been studying you.
Not in a restraining-order way. In a strategic way. Judy Schramm and her team at ProResource put together a full assessment of my public brand—the LinkedIn footprint, the bio, the trail of evidence forty years of working leaves behind whether you want it to or not. And then Judy kindly sent it to me.
Now, I have spent a career telling CEOs hard truths they did not order and could not return. I have built an entire coaching practice on the premise that the most expensive thing in any boardroom is the comfortable lie everyone agrees to believe. So you’d think I’d be calm about somebody holding up a mirror.
Reader, I read it standing up. With one hand near the delete key. Just in case.
It was fine. It was better than fine. Which is its own kind of unsettling—you brace for the gut-punch and instead get a firm handshake, and now you don’t know what to do with your hands.
What the assessment actually said
Here’s the short version, paraphrased so I don’t bore you and lightly edited so I don’t blush.
Forty-plus years in technology. Salesman, product manager, marketing VP, general manager for a Fortune 500 telecom software division. A decade as a hired-gun turnaround CEO for private equity—which is a polite way of saying “the guy they call when the building is on fire and the founder is still arguing about the logo.” More than a hundred CEOs coached over fifteen years. Executive in Residence at University of Maryland Ventures, where I still run I-Corps programs teaching STEM researchers the radical idea that you should talk to a customer before you build the thing.
And then there was the part where Washingtonian once profiled me as “Mr. Cranky,” the blogger who spent years calling out overhyped startups and press-release theater in the DC tech scene. The assessment listed this as a credibility signal.
A credibility signal. Forty years of being insufferable, professionally validated. My mother would be so confused.
The line that made me put the coffee down
The assessment’s read on my philosophy was this: know your intentions, tell the truth, validate with customers, face reality, lead with accountability.
I have written an entire book—Intentional Leadership—trying to say that in a way that takes three hundred pages. Judy’s team said it in one sentence. I’d be annoyed if it weren’t so accurate. That’s the whole job, by the way. Leadership isn’t a personality. It’s a destination you’ve actually decided on, said out loud, and then refused to drift away from when the quarter gets ugly. Most leaders skip the deciding part and wonder why the bus keeps ending up somewhere they didn’t choose.
There was also a caveat, and I want to read it into the record because it’s the truest thing in the whole document: I’m probably not the right coach for everyone. My brand is blunt. “No BS accountability” is on the website, not as marketing, but as a warning label. I am very good for the CEO who wants a reality check and strategic pressure-testing and a person who will say the thing in the room that everyone else is texting each other about. I am less good for the leader who wants affirmation more than challenge.
That’s not a flaw in the assessment. That’s a filter. If reading “blunt” made you flinch, we’ve already saved us both a discovery call.
The part I’m choosing to skip
There was a whole section evaluating whether my business is a venture-scale investment opportunity. Whether CxO Elevate could scale, productize, throw off the kind of metrics that make a VC’s pupils dilate.
I’m going to gently set that section down over here, on this table, and walk away from it.
Because here’s the thing nobody on a cap table wants to hear: a coaching practice isn’t supposed to be a unicorn. The value is tied to the human. That’s not a bug to be engineered out—it’s the entire product. You don’t get a software license. You get a guy who has sat across from a hundred founders on the worst day of their company and is still in the room. There’s no SaaS version of that. There’s no Series A that makes me care more.
So—respectfully—the investment question is the wrong question. The right one is simpler: do you want someone who will tell you the truth?
What it all comes down to
The funny thing about being assessed is that it’s a small dose of your own medicine. I make my living holding the mirror up for other people. Turns out it’s bracing from the other side, too. Recommended, actually. Every leader should get looked at clearly by someone who has no incentive to flatter them.
Real gratitude to Judy Schramm and the team at ProResource for the assessment. Judy was one of the first hundred thousand people on LinkedIn, has built authentic personal brands for more than 2,500 executives, and wrote the book—literally, How to Craft a CEO Brand—on this. If your LinkedIn presence currently reads like a hostage statement, she’s who you call. She is the genuine article, and around here, that’s the highest compliment I’ve got.
As for me: I’m Glen Hellman. I’m an executive coach and business coach at CxO Elevate, I run a CEO peer advisory group for founders who’d rather hear it straight, and I help leaders get intentional, get accountable, and get close enough to their customers to stop guessing.
The assessment says I’m direct, funny, substantive, and not for everyone.
I read it twice. I’m not gonna lie. I couldn’t find the lie.
If you’re a founder or CEO who wants the truth more than the applause—let’s talk. the mirror up for other people. Turns out it’s bracing from the other side, too. Recommended, actually. Every leader should get looked at clearly by someone who has no incentive to flatter them.
Real gratitude to Judy Schramm and the team at ProResource for the assessment. Judy was one of the first hundred thousand people on LinkedIn, has built authentic personal brands for more than 2,500 executives, and wrote the book—literally, How to Craft a CEO Brand—on this. If your LinkedIn presence currently reads like a hostage statement, she’s who you call. She is the genuine article, and around here, that’s the highest compliment I’ve got.
As for me: I’m Glen Hellman. I’m an executive coach and business coach at CxO Elevate, I run a CEO peer advisory group for founders who’d rather hear it straight, and I help leaders get intentional, get accountable, and get close enough to their customers to stop guessing.
The assessment says I’m direct, funny, substantive, and not for everyone.
I read it twice. I’m not gonna lie. I couldn’t find the lie.
If you’re a founder or CEO who wants the truth more than the applause—let’s talk.
