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In this episode, weโre joined by a powerhouse entrepreneur and business coachย Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud, unpacking her journey of self-belief, strategy, and resilience!
With experience as a CFO in Paris, a General Manager in Bali, co-founder of a thriving tech startupย Le VPN, and now, empowering executive women to venture into tech and SaaS entrepreneurship, she shares how ๐ฌ๐ก๐โ๐ฌ ๐๐ฅ๐ฐ๐๐ฒ๐ฌ ๐ฌ๐๐ข๐ โ๐๐๐โ ๐ญ๐จ ๐จ๐ฉ๐ฉ๐จ๐ซ๐ญ๐ฎ๐ง๐ข๐ญ๐ข๐๐ฌโno matter how unprepared she feltโand thrived by learning on the go.ย
If youโre an aspiring entrepreneur or a senior executive woman contemplating leadership roles, this conversation will give you the insight, motivation, and courage to take your own leap.
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Empowerment Voices Interview: Julie Landau with Ksenia Votinova-Arnaud
Julie: First an intro about who you are, your background and professional journey, what you do and what you can bring to the audience of women?
Today: A tech entrepreneur and a business coach. Prior: a corporate executive, first as a CFO in a fintech company in Paris, then as a General manager in the luxury hospitality company in Bali.
Co-founded my first tech startup Le VPN 12 years ago that is now a stable and profitable company, and a market leader in its niche.
8 years ago started working as a Business Coach at INSEAD business school (my alma matter where I did my MBA). My role there is to work with executives on their innovation projects that could create superior value in their marketplace, and in the past 8 years Iโve coached over a thousand people, including a lot of executive women in tech from such companies as Google, Amazon, Salesforce, SAP, and many more.
Coaching over a thousand people I discovered my passion for coaching entrepreneurs and business owners, especially women coming from the tech industry, which is probably because of my own background as an entrepreneur in tech.
My main focus today: helping executive women in tech start their own tech and SaaS businesses that create real value for their customers, and confidently leave their corporate jobs, if thatโs what they decide to do to go full in on their business.ย
I do this through 1on1 coaching, group coaching programs, and masterminds, as well as sharing my free resources and tips on social media like LinkedIn, my website, blog, and newsletter. I just really want to help and inspire them on their entrepreneurship journey no matter what stage they are in.
Julie:
Youโve taken on two vastly different leadership roles in a short period in your professional journey. How did you manage to acquire the skills and knowledge needed for each job so quickly? Were there any moments of struggle that became pivotal learning experiences?
Ksenia:
Yes, the first one was at the beginning of my career right after my Masterโs degree in Paris. I started an Assistant to CEO role in a fintech startup Riskdata, for which I was very grateful at the time as I was a very fresh immigrant to France so wasnโt picky about titles despite of my masterโs degree in business. Four months into the job I was asked to fill in for a CFO role that became vacant while the whole office left for the summer holidays, so I embraced it 100% and decided Iโd do everything I could to excel in it while everybody is gone. Embracing the Leadership Leap when you feel unprepared.
My strategy was to learn from those who know how to do it right and not be afraid to ask for help. So for almost 2 months, I called our accounting firm almost every day to ask questions on things I struggled with, and they were very patient with me as I learned. I took lots of notes of everything I learned and turned them into processes and procedures for myself. Each time I made a mistake, I made sure to document it for myself and update my process to make sure I didnโt make it again. I guess what helped me there is my personality: I love processes and staying organized. So 4 months into this CFO role while I was still doing my assistant job on the side, during a corporate Christmas party the CEO announced my promotion, saying that they were no longer hiring a CFO and that I was to take the job. So on the 2nd of January, I was in his office negotiating my new paycheck and bonuses that would go along with the title, plus formal training and mentoring budget and a new assistant to take over my assistant job. I won.
Funny enough, almost the same story happened in the next job I took after I did my MBA degree at INSEAD. I was hired to work as a Director of Marketing and Business Development for a luxury real estate company in Bali, one of the market leaders of the time, that was struggling to beat their competition in the online space. It was back in 2011, so digital marketing was still in its early days but the growth potential was already obvious. So I accepted the job to do the digital transformation of the company and set up its digital marketing to increase sales. But again, 5 months into the job my boss, the business owner, told me that she had to move to California for family reasons and I had to take over running the whole company. Frankly, that was not my ambition because I loved my job and all the great results and the impact I was making, and taking on the General Manager role meant having less time doing the job I was passionate about and that made a real difference for the business in terms of sales, brand and market positioning, but there were no other options and I had no choice but to accept.
The first months into a new role were really tough. I suddenly had two jobs, one of which I was not really prepared for except for some really theoretical management classes from business school. I now had to manage 20 Indonesians in the office and 200 in the villas, with very little support from my boss who was now miles away and in a different time zone.
Now looking back I think I used the same strategy as I did in my first job. I reached out for help to those who could know the answer. I leveraged my network from INSEAD business school and had a couple of informal mentors who were my MBA classmates. I also looked for advice from other expats working in Bali to understand how they overcame challenges related to intercultural management, as at the time I was facing a lot of resistance from my team (at the time I was a 30-year old European female mostly managing local men who were a decade older than me). Plus, there was a leak from the accounting department that I was earning 6 figures in that job and it didnโt make the situation better with my team.
So I had to turn things around and get better at that job before the whole company left because they didnโt like their new leader, so I shifted my focus on learning to lead people and trying and testing the different tips I was getting from my network. And it helped. Once I realized that the problem was not them but me and that I had to change my behavior to become a better leader for my team, and started testing different strategies to see what would work, I finally got the answer. When I decided to leave this job in Bali 1 year later to start my own business, at the farewell party that the team threw for me I received many testimonials that I was the best boss theyโve ever had.ย
Julie:
When we discussed earlier, you mentioned that youโve never said no to any opportunities. Can you share the thought process behind saying โyesโ to those leadership roles even when you felt unprepared? What pushed you to embrace them despite the fear of not being ready?
Ksenia:
I had a profound belief in the first decade of my career that I had no privilege of saying No to opportunities, no matter how scary they looked, because that was the only way for me to grow. And I wanted to grow so much!
So my rule was to always say Yes if the new role or business opportunity could make me grow, and figure out the HOW later. Because when something challenges us, it makes us grow. And weโre never really prepared for challenges but we can figure them out along the way.
Iโm pretty sure I applied the same principle when I started my first business. Was I prepared to go full-in into entrepreneurship? Absolutely not! I donโt think you can ever feel prepared, but I did it anyway because it was important to me, and figured out how to make it work in the process.
Julie:
Many women feel theyโre not qualified for the roles they aspire to. How did you manage moments of self-doubt, especially when stepping into those challenging positions? Did you have any rituals, mentors, or strategies that helped you build confidence?
Ksenia:
Imposter Syndrome is real and I think that the first thing to realize is that itโs very common to everyone and almost everyone has it. The question is what you do about it.
I learned this technique when living in Bali. I worked with a coach at the time who shared with me this tool. I gave my imposter syndrome a name and a personality. I called her Barbara. So each time I heard those voices in my head that I was not good enough, that I couldnโt do it, that it was not for me or was too much, that Iโd become a laughing stock if I took that new job, etc. - I caught myself in the process and told myself that it was not me, but Barbara talking. And that Barbara needs to literally shut up and go sit in the corner, because nobody asked her opinion - Iโm the boss.ย
It may sound like a really silly process but it really works. I use it with my clients now and make them close their eyes and visualize their Imposter Syndrom person, and then make it sit in the corner and be quiet. I work with a lot of senior executive women and I can tell you that even they have this lack of confidence showing up for them all the time. The more you grow, the more senior roles you take on, and the bigger the doubts. The difference is that you can deal with those effectively and reclaim your confidence when you need it.
Julie:
Transitioning from corporate roles to entrepreneurship is a bold leap. What was your biggest challenge during that transition, and how did you overcome it to establish yourself as a successful business owner and coach?
Ksenia:
As Tony Robbins says, big leaps and changes in life happen either out of pain or pleasure.
My leap from a 6-figure executive role into entrepreneurship came from the pain of not having control over the business I was building and watching somebody else (the business owner) reaping all the benefits of my hard work and 16-hour days. One morning I woke up and I knew I was done working for others while I could build the same thing and more for myself.
My challenges were very typical and Iโd say there were top 3:
1/ How to financially sustain myself while I was building my business and not paying myself.
2/ How to make sure that the business Iโm starting will actually work, and when to know itโs time to jump off the ship and look for another job.
3/ What to focus on when you have to build everything from scratch.
So I had to start by building a financial plan. I didnโt leave my corporate job right away but prepared by cutting my costs and increasing my savings to up to 90% of my salary (which was easy to do because of the cost of living in Bali). It was also the time when I wanted to be a digital nomad and set my home in Asia while building my business, which was a good idea at the time because of the cost of living and also the lifestyle that came with it, so that meant that my savings could last me longer.
So I gave myself a timeframe of 1 year to work on my business and to decide whether that worked. Thatโs when my co-founder came to me and pitched his idea of Le VPN and showed the results of the experiment he was running with a very scrappy prototype and all the client feedback he was getting, I thought it was a great idea since we had the proof from clients that there was a market need. So I thought, if I could figure out how to successfully market luxury villas, I could do the same for a VPN app.
But then the latest point on finding the focus on what to focus on was probably my biggest challenge. I think I was all over the place when we got started and I was busy fighting fires vs. focusing on things that could really make us grow. I still relied a lot on my network to learn things that were new to me and also on my co-founder who knew this industry very well, but I wish I had a formal mentor or a coach at a time because that would definitely accelerate my progress not just my months, but possibly by years.
I think my biggest leap in business happened when I figured this last part out where to spend my time and efforts to achieve maximum results.
Julie:
As a business coach for women launching their SaaS solutions, what are the common obstacles you see women facing, and how do you guide them to push beyond their comfort zones to achieve their full potential?
Ksenia:
Actually, the 3 top obstacles that I struggled with myself when I was getting started are the ones Iโm seeing repeatedly when I work with executive women launching their businesses in tech (or planning on starting one).
It all sums up to the fear of financial instability and having a plan for that. A lot of my client choose to start working on their business while they are still in their corporate jobs, dedicating their evening and weekends to building a strong enough foundation and validating their business idea before they leave their corporate job. Thatโs what I would do myself too if I were to start all over again.
The second is the uncertainty whether their business idea can be successful. The truth is, not every idea will be, especially in its initial form and shape as it came to us, and it needs to be tested in the market with real customers in order to understand if it works and in which form. Thatโs what we do with women entrepreneurs I work with. We start by speaking to their potential customers to understand whether indeed we nailed the problem that they have and there is demand for having that problem solved. Most of the times what we learn from those customers interviews gives us insights on how to pivot or refine our idea based on what real people want, and then test again. This is the only way to gain that certainty that what youโre building is actually needed and has a market with customers willing to pay for it. It can be a lengthy and time-consuming process, especially if many pivots are required, but thatโs the safest and surest way to gain that certainty and market validation before you invest all your time and money and go full in.
And lastly, the challenge of lacking the structure and support and knowing where to start and what to focus on, often couple with how to maintain a work/life balance especially when you have a family and young kids, and make sure youโre still living a full life and not burning out working literally two jobs. This is where coaching comes in. It always pays off to work with someone whoโs been there before you and can help you to avoid common traps. As Iโve been working with coaches and mentors my whole life (and still do), I can only recommend to invest into coaching support as it really is one of the best shortcuts you can find in building a business. As as you would invest in hiring the best possible team for your business, you should invest in hiring the best possible coach for yourself. The only difference is that working with a coach would be cheaper because youโll be doing all the actual work in your business yourself.
Julie:
If you were offered a job tomorrow for which you had absolutely zero experience or skills, what would it be, and how would you tackle it?
Ksenia:
Haha! This is a very hypothetical question to me because I cannot imagine myself taking a job or working for somebody else. At the same time, it completely resonate with me as I feel like thatโs what Iโve been doing for the whole past year when I decided to start building my personal brand and start sharing my thoughts on LinkedIn.ย
So I could say that I took that โinfluencerโ job for which I indeed had no skills or experience. In fact, I even had a lot of resistance of sharing pictures of myself, not talking about videos or being on camera or even be on a podcast.ย
But I knew it was important for my business, for my mission of reaching and empowering more women to start their own businesses, and also for my own professional growth. So I went all in.
I first started with myself, we can call it self-coaching, thinking of all the different reason why it was important for me to do it. I like to start with looking into the Why when I work with my clients too, it really helps to be able to go back to these reasons when the journey gets tough.
Then I analysed all the resources that were already available to me and that I could leverage for this new project or job. And then identified the gaps on where I needed to build in those resources in terms of skills and experience, and created an action plan to make it happen. That mostly consisted of going through more training, working with coaches and mentors (and I worked with 7 coaches this year who helped me to build my skills and fill my gaps in the areas I needed to upgrade the most). It was quite an investment but it was absolutely worth it.
And then lastly, I created an action plan that I could commit to, and probably iterated it like a million times in the process.
So I think thatโs my process for tackling anything new in my busines or life, and thatโs what I would do if I took a job I wasnโt really qualified for but that was important to me:
Analyse and leverage the resources I already have.
Identify my gaps in resources like skills and experience, and find away to get access to those, including working with those who already excel at it.
Create an action plan to stay committed to my goal of succeeding in that job and refine this plan along the way.
A dynamic tech entrepreneur and seasoned business coach, she shifted from executive rolesโCFO in fintech and GM in luxury hospitalityโto co-founding Le VPN, now a market leader. As an INSEAD Business Coach, sheโs empowered over a thousand executives, including top women leaders from Google, Amazon, and Salesforce, to drive market-changing innovation. Today, her mission is bold: to help women in tech confidently launch their own ventures, guiding them to leave corporate roles and fully commit to their entrepreneurial dreams. Through coaching, programs, and resources, sheโs inspiring a new generation of women leaders.
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