We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Sheryl Kline a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Sheryl, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Often outsiders look at a successful business and think it became a success overnight. Even media and especially movies love to gloss over nitty, gritty details that went into that middle phase of your business – after you started but before you got to where you are today. In our experience, overnight success is usually the result of years of hard work laying the foundation for success, but unfortunately, it’s exactly this part of the story that most of the media ignores. Can you talk to us about your scaling up story – what are some of the nitty, gritty details folks should know about?

At a formidable age, I was told that I was not a good enough student to remain in the small public school I was attending. Despite working hard and getting nearly perfect grades, I was eventually asked to leave this school. This sparked my curiosity to answer the question ‘Who gets to decide who’s good enough?’ Did my principal get to decide my fate? What about Olympians? Did someone choose who is good enough to be the best in the world? To answer that question, I eventually received a Master’s Degree in Applied Sports Psychology. I had the honor of working with some of the top athletes in the world to help them get better quicker and to perform under pressure. I became an expert in helping experts be there best, especially under pressure, because no one could teach me to do this when it mattered in my life. I did this for two decades and then a friend on the C-staff at Autodesk asked me to speak on a joint panel with Google Ventures: Mental Toughness and High Performance for 50 of the Best Women in Tech. Despite being outside my comfort zone (I was working with teenagers and young adults at the time), I did it. When ensues was these amazing leaders asking me to help them mentally prepare so the get funding from VC’s when the pressure was on, to have a bigger voice with their CEO’s and board members, and to help them gain clarity and execute their legacy plans. About 10 years ago, I partnered with Kim Bryant’s Black Girls Code and Reshma Saugani’s Girls Who Code to donate my time and resources, so every young person could know how to be mentally tough and perform under pressure, and I then shifted my coaching practice to work exclusively with female executives and their teams. I have now also created an enterprise AI digital program that can help leaders help to amplify the voice and impact of all the women in their organizations.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I speak to this in my last question, but here’s my bio as well:Over the last 20 years, Sheryl Kline has brought out the best in world-class athletes, Olympians, and some of the most prolific and influential female leaders in the country and their teams. Some of the companies that Sheryl has partnered with are: Google Ventures, Oracle, Autodesk, Microsoft, Capital One, VMware, UC Berkeley Haas School of Business, and Bank of America to name a few.

Sheryl is also trained in FBI hostage negotiation, to ensure women’s ideas and innovations can be heard, valued, and respected by peers, leadership, and board members.

Sheryl Kline is an executive high performance coach, speaker, AI digital creator, CEO/Founder of the Zone Lab, and now a two-time best-selling author, most recently the acclaimed book, The Fearless Female Leader.

Sheryl resides in Carlsbad, CA with her husband Scott and black lab Kona.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I had to unlearn that ‘I am not good enough.’ The explanation is in my story that I shared previously.

Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?

I went from being kicked out of private school at age 10 to coaching some of the most prolific and influential female leaders in the country and speaking on stages of over 20,000.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.sherylkline.com
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sherylklinema/

Image Credits

jmpnola photography