Matt Mochary’s day job is coaching startup CEOs. His clients include the founders of Coinbase, Brex, Clearbit, Plaid, and other companies that grew fast enough to create the exact problems Mochary helps solve. He wrote this book because he found himself repeating the same advice across dozens of engagements and figured it would be more efficient to write it down.
The result is closer to a field manual than a traditional book. Chapters are short, often two or three pages. Each one addresses a specific operational problem: how to run a weekly team meeting, how to give feedback, how to make decisions when the team disagrees, how to hire an executive, how to fire someone who is not working out. There is no padding. Mochary says what he thinks, gives you the process, and moves on.
Some of the advice is obvious but rarely practiced. Write down your top goal for the week. Process your inbox to zero. Give feedback within 24 hours. Start every meeting with a check-in where people share how they are feeling. These are not original ideas, but Mochary’s contribution is packaging them into a system that a CEO can actually implement Monday morning.
Other sections go deeper. The chapter on CEO psychology addresses the loneliness, fear, and identity issues that come with the job. The chapter on energy management argues that how a CEO manages their own energy, including sleep, exercise, and time in nature, has a bigger effect on company performance than most strategic decisions. The chapter on fundraising is a step-by-step guide that includes specific email templates.
The self-published format means there is no index, no bibliography, and minimal polish. Some sections feel like they were transcribed from a coaching session rather than written for a reader. But the density of practical content per page is higher than almost any other leadership book. It is the rare book where the lack of polish is a feature, because it means nothing was added for the sake of filling pages.
Mochary has published updated versions of the content on his website, and the frameworks continue to evolve as he coaches more companies. The book functions best as a starting point, a compressed version of what an expensive CEO coach would tell you in the first few months.
