You've shipped the impossible. Navigated impossible stakeholder dynamics. Turned ambiguous mess into shipping roadmaps. You're the person everyone comes to when things are hard.
But here's what nobody tells you: the skills that made you a great IC are actively getting in your way as a leader.
I'm Mike Huang, and I've spent the last decade coaching leaders and founders through the transition that breaks most people—the shift from "I execute" to "I enable others to execute."
You're a leader who got promoted because you ship. But now you're drowning in 1:1s, your team keeps coming to you for decisions, and you're working nights to keep up. You know you're supposed to "delegate" and "empower," but your team's output drops when you step back. So you step back in. The cycle continues.
Or you're a founder who's built a product people love. But the team dynamics are a mess. People keep leaving. Conflicts go unresolved. You're spending more time managing drama than building the business. You wonder: Am I just bad at this people stuff?
The answer is no.
You just haven't been coached on it.
I didn't start as a coach. I started as a product manager building infrastructure at FanDuel—payments, compliance, regulatory systems. The kind of work where getting it wrong meant regulatory shutdowns and millions in lost revenue.
What I learned: Technical excellence is table stakes. The real differentiator is leadership.
The PMs who thrived weren't just the smartest—they were the ones who could navigate ambiguity, build trust across fractured stakeholder groups, and create alignment when everyone had different definitions of success. They had emotional intelligence, not just product sense.
So I went deep. Got certified as an executive coach (CPC, ACC). Studied behavioral psychology. Worked with product leaders and founders at Salesforce, Intuit, Pinterest. Launched a podcast on emotional intelligence for business leaders. Even built an AI coaching platform because I believed we could scale great coaching the way we scale great products.
Here's my philosophy: The best coaching isn't therapy, and it isn't consulting. It's building the internal operating system that lets you lead at scale—the self-awareness, emotional regulation, and relational skills that nobody teaches you in product management.
We work together weekly (or bi-weekly) to build the capabilities you need to lead effectively:
Not navel-gazing—practical understanding of your patterns, triggers, and blindspots so you can lead intentionally instead of reactively
How to stay centered when stakeholders are panicking, your team is confused, and you don't have all the answers
Getting alignment across engineering, design, business, and legal when everyone has competing priorities
Delegating without micromanaging, developing your team instead of doing their jobs, and creating the conditions where great work happens
I'm not just a coach. I'm someone who's lived what you're living. I've built products in regulated environments where one wrong move tanks the quarter. I've managed P&Ls, architected infrastructure for scale, and navigated the exact stakeholder nightmares you're facing.
When you tell me "my eng lead and designer can't agree on scope," I don't just ask coaching questions—I can pattern-match to the 47 times I've seen that dynamic and help you see what's really happening underneath.
The executives I work with don't just feel better (though they do). They perform better:
Founders who went from "drowning in my business" to building teams that run without them
Product leaders who got promoted because they finally cracked the executive communication game
First-time managers who stopped being "the team's best IC" and became actual leaders
Entrepreneurs who scaled from $120K to $2M+ ARR because they built the internal capacity to handle that growth
But here's what clients tell me they value most: "You helped me see the problem I was too close to see. Now I can't unsee it—and I know how to solve it."
Some clients need more than coaching—they need hands-on product leadership. I take on 2-3 fractional CPO engagements at a time for companies that need:
Part-time product exec expertise without the full-time hire
Someone who understands regulated environments (fintech, gaming)
Infrastructure and AI/ML product strategy
Often the work overlaps: I'm coaching the founder while also building their product org. Sometimes it's separate. Either way, the combination of "build the leader" + "build the product function" creates compounding results.
My coaching works best for:
Product leaders (PM, Director, VP) navigating the shift from IC to leader
Founders scaling from 10 to 100 people and realizing "winging it" doesn't work anymore
First-time executives who got promoted for technical skills and now need leadership skills
Anyone who suspects their ceiling isn't their product skills—it's their leadership
You're smart, accomplished, and used to figuring things out. But you're hitting a wall that hard work alone won't solve. That's where coaching creates leverage.
I work with 4-6 coaching clients at a time. This allows me to go deep with each person rather than spread thin across dozens.
If you're curious whether coaching would help, let's have a 30-minute exploratory conversation. No pitch. Just a real discussion about what you're navigating and whether I'm the right person to help.
Schedule a Conversation