Shelley Prevost has many titles, from the descriptive (coach) to the official (CEO). She’s a founding partner of Chattanooga-based Lamp Post Group and its director of happiness, which is to say, she makes sure that entrepreneurs at the venture incubator feel a sense of balance as human beings, not just as professionals. She’s also a partner at the female-focused angel fund JumpFund, which reports it has invested more than half of the $2.5 million it raised in 2013, spread across 10 companies.
Last year, Prevost founded her own company, Torch, which has built a router that allows parents to monitor and manage their children’s Internet access. In mid-January, Torch reported that it had logged 1,000 pre-orders, with the count growing and shipments slated to go out in March. Prevost also writes regularly about business as an online contributor for Inc.com.
The mother of three, school-aged children, Prevost, 41, graduated from Georgetown College, a small Christian college in Kentucky. She earned a masters degree in clinical psychology from Wheaton College in Illinois and a doctoral degree in counseling psychology from Argosy University in California. Her career path started in counselor mode; the startup world was not an obvious next step.
Edge talked to Prevost about letting intuition lead the way, how she landed at Lamp Post Group and the critical component behind her startup pursuits. Below are edited excerpts.
So, you have a psychology degree and were a therapist …
Yes, I dealt mostly with adults, 25- to 55-year-old women, with anxiety, depression or adjustment disorder. A lot of it was a loss of a sense of self or maybe never fully figuring out who they were. I would ask, “What are you passionate about?” and they wouldn’t know. A lot of it was getting them back to their instincts.
It’s very similar to life coaching. What caused their erosion of a sense of self?
Developmentally, we think if we check all these boxes – if I graduate, check; If I have kids, check – that we’ll be (happy). But there was a deadness. They had to give up a lot of fulfillment to lead the life they think they should lead: a crisis of belief, that’s what usually brings people in.
What do you tell them when that happens?
It depends on what they’re afraid of, if it’s actually rational. My therapist keeps suggesting this book to me, “The Year of Yes” (a book Hollywood producer Shonda Rhimes wrote about facing her fears).
Seems you already say yes a lot, given you have so many pursuits. I’m surprised to hear you see a therapist.
I’d be crazy if I didn’t. It was a such a huge learning curve for me learning business. When I was a therapist I saw a therapist for therapists.
How does seeing a therapist help you?
My therapist has been my life-blood for three years. The main themes for me are balancing work and family as an ambitious woman, and the guilt that comes from that and embracing the shadow side of my personality. I’m learning that I can be loving and very decisive and uncompromising at the same time. The integration of my loving, empathic side and my ambitious, (harder) side is what I will be learning for the rest of my life.
That speaks to your leadership style. How does it benefit men in particular? Women?
My emotions and intuition are core to who I am, so it makes sense that these come out in my leadership style. Men and women both crave permission to be open, intuitive and honest about how they’re feeling – even in business. Let’s quit pretending that these things don’t matter. They do! Especially in business relationships where stakes are so high. … I instinctively run our company differently than a man would.
Tell me about that.
Lead like a girl — I did a TED talk on that. There’s an innate kind of competitiveness in management, and there should be. I’m very competitive. But that’s not my default; it’s collaboration. I really want my team’s input. I don’t want to be the smartest person in the room, like I’m their boss and need to manage them. Really good teams, they don’t have somebody at the top; they build a network. I think women are uniquely equipped for this; we’re not linear, by nature. I’m more comfortable leading with a bunch of people (while I’m) sitting in the middle … Most tech startups work in this networked model. When you only have 10 people in the office, there is no room for ego or hierarchy. Everyone has to give 100 percent all the time. If someone wants to sit at the top and give orders, they’ll find it tough to keep talented, smart people.
So how did you get connected to Lamp Post Group?
Allan Davis (a Lamp Post Group founder) was one of my clients. This was during his time with Access America. My work with him was much more coaching. At some point he started talking about this Lamp Post Group and said he wanted to hire a psychologist to help everyone communicate better, he wanted a coach to help us all talk better together. I was at Access America by January 2011, there three times a week. Most of it was the employees coming by to say, “Do you have five minutes?” and that would turn into 30.
During your TED talk last summer you mentioned frustration during your early days at Lamp Post Group because of your uncommon role. Then, a friend, Steve (Medlin, former Lamp Post employee), said: “You are not coming to bring the medicine, you are the medicine.”
This was a low point for me. I was really struggling to understand what I was contributing at Lamp Post, and Steve’s comment made me realize it’s not what I was doing, it was who I was, the skills I bring to bear like emotional intelligence and vulnerability and raw communication — that was making a diffe rence. I was a symbol that emotions and relationships are as big a part of business as spreadsheets and financial statements. I just had to learn to embrace that.
In a recent Inc.com column you admit you have a fear of looking stupid. This is the case for most humans, but in business it seems more pronounced for women. What are some tools women can use to stop perpetuating that?
Be in learning mode 75 percent of the time. If you don’t know something and need to have an intelligent conversation about it, learn everything you can about the topic. Come home from work and study. Read books. Google about ideas and words you don’t understand, under the conference room table if you need to. “What do I need to learn right now to get where I want to go?” is something I ask myself a lot. And ask for help of people you trust. Being vulnerable when you don’t know something makes people want to help you.
What’s the most compelling piece of advice you give women breaking into new ventures?
It’s better to be respected than liked, when you’re leading a startup. I used to worry a lot about what people thought of me; now I can’t dwell on insecurities. I have to first listen to my instincts, then follow them, even if that means hurting feelings or being disliked.
In an early Inc. column you talked about entrepreneurs making “terrible decisions.” What was one of yours, and how did you grow from it?
The mistake I make a lot is not trusting my instincts. I self-doubt a lot because I never studied business, never even took a class, so I think I can’t possibly know enough to run a company.
Tell me about starting Torch.
Torch was born out of my own needs as a parent in the digital age. I wanted a bit more oversight when my kids were online, but didn’t want to “lock down” the Internet or only block and tackle bad sites, which is primarily what most parental controls are used for thus far: filtering content. We’re innovating solutions to help parents, yes, protect their kids online, but also engage with the discoveries their kids are making on the internet. And making it super simple for non-technical parents like me to use, which is our secret sauce.
Your husband, Chad, is a stay-at-home dad.
He’s picked up every bit of domestic work.
Where would you be now as far as Torch – and perhaps JumpFund, Lamp Post Group or any other professional capacity – had that not happened?
I am so unbelievably grateful for my husband (who’s also a writer). When he left teaching (in 2011) and decided to work at home, we had a long conversation about the switch of roles and how/if it would work. I knew that I could not pursue a high-growth startup without him being devoted more full-time to care for our kids. If in any way I thought my ambition would create an unhealthy or disconnected family for our kids, I wouldn’t be able to do it. Chad knew that and has stepped up in a big, big way. I may be the CEO of Torch, but he is the CEO of our family and keeps us all connected, laughing, healthy and well-fed. It is because of him that I can do what I do.