Executive coaching by Calin Drimbau
Ambition is only half the work
I coach founders and operators through the moments when they feel stuck.
Who I work with
The edge
It’s the edge of your comfort zone. The edge of what you’ve done so far. The edge of your emotions.
You’re stuck because it’s the thing that makes you fearful, and you don’t even want to admit you’re scared of it.
Most of the time you don’t know you’re at the edge.
You think you’re on top of things. It’s like believing you’re at Base Camp when you’re actually at Camp 3 and an avalanche is coming.
So you push harder. You grind against the edge and call it discipline. But grinding is the resistance to the edge.
You spend enormous energy avoiding the thing right in front of you. That’s what burns you out.
The practice
The first step is noticing what has you on edge: the way you pitch, talk to your co-founder or the energy you have for what you’re building.
Nobody wants to say they’re at the edge. I’m not saying put it on LinkedIn. Say the hard thing out loud to one person who can witness you.
The limiting beliefs are the resistance to the edge. We work out where they come from, reduce their power and come back with enough momentum to try.
Then you act. You jump and you’ll probably fall. So you try again: a parachute, a line between the cliffs. You don’t know yet what will work.
You make it. Celebrate, rest, pitch your tent and enjoy the view. Just don’t camp there and start preaching. After a while, you feel the pull to climb the next mountain.
The first time you meet your edge, you feel fear. At some point you start watching yourself play the game and looking forward to your edges.
At 20 I managed 20 people, many of them with 30 years more experience than me. Later I managed over a hundred and sat on the boards of three companies.
As a C-level executive, I grew a business from nothing to a $100 million valuation in a single year and then to an exit to private equity, working with clients like Verizon, JPMorgan and Pfizer.
Then I raised money for my own startup and built a venture-backed business in Silicon Valley without knowing a single person there.
If I have one commitment, it’s to self-discovery. I’ve kept a deep meditation and Vipassana practice for years. I trained in Interpersonal Dynamics at Stanford, where I now facilitate Touchy-Feely.
I’ve trained with Joe Hudson and The Art of Accomplishment, gone deep into somatic work, and taken part in men’s work and plant medicine journeys.
Each path gave me a tool. Those tools let me see my own edges sooner, cross them faster, and work from excitement instead of fear.
Today I coach founders and operators one-to-one and facilitate Interpersonal Dynamics at Stanford. The people I work with are building their own companies or leading teams at places like OpenAI, Google and Anthropic.
“Calin helped me navigate the hardest moments I’ve faced as a CEO: the ones I used to just push through. I came out of them clearer, with more room to choose.”
“You are such a good coach. So many of the moments where you gave feedback were big turning points for me.”
“I was already good at processing my emotions. What changed through working with Calin was how I acted on them. I learned to take ownership of what I wanted and keep pursuing my ambitions, especially when things got hard.”
“Your ability to ask a question or give an invitation that brings people back into the here-now and into an emotional state is really, really masterful.”
Working together
I work with driven people who want the next version of themselves and can feel something stopping them.
Working with me is going to be challenging. Most of the work is yours. Mine is to guide you to your edges and to what’s sitting underneath them. The commitment is to the practice, not to me.