Executive coaching for Asian American founders & executives in New York City & San Francisco
One coach for your mindset.
One for your business.
Weekly sessions with each of us, coordinated so your mindset and your business change together. Start with 90 days, then keep going for as long as it's useful.
- With Danny: the beliefs behind the calls you keep putting off
- With Sam: how your business sells, delivers and grows
- Built with Sam, kept by your team: a price list, a checklist for each new client, a guide for each role
Mind
Danny Liu, PsyD
Licensed clinical psychologist & executive coach. Featured by ABC News.
10 years with high-achieving Asian American professionals CEOs and founders: most of his current clients
Read bio →
Mechanism
Sam Hirbod
Executive coach. Trained 3,000+ people for Google.
Up to 600% revenue growth in five months for businesses he's coached 200+ agencies' founders and leadership teams coached
Read bio →
Mind and Mechanism
Mind & Mechanism is an executive coaching program for Asian American founders and executives. It pairs Danny Liu, PsyD, a licensed clinical psychologist and executive coach, with Sam Hirbod, an executive coach who works with you on how the business sells, delivers, hires and grows.
In person in Manhattan or remote. We work with clients in New York City, the San Francisco Bay Area and across the US.
Each dot is a weekly session. An example of how the first three months can go:
Start with a free intro call, then weekly sessions with each of us. After the first review, Danny's sessions continue by agreement and you and Sam set your own pace.
The belief underneath the behavior
Reading these patterns accurately is clinical training. It's the part most executive coaching can't reach.
How the work goes
The behavior is doing a job.
Procrastination protects you from being evaluated. Over-functioning protects you from being seen as insufficient. Staying too long protects you from being someone who leaves.
Find the belief underneath it.
Where it formed, what it's protecting, and what it costs you now in board meetings, hiring decisions, and any room where somebody has authority over you.
Turn it into a claim you can test.
Small experiments in real conditions. Sending something before it's polished. Saying the direct version out loud. Letting a deadline pass without absorbing it yourself.
It goes better than you feared.
Most of the time what you've been bracing for doesn't happen, and the belief loses some of its authority. That takes a while, which is why the work is weekly.
What you leave with
A clear read on the beliefs running underneath the patterns: where each one formed, what it protects, and what it is costing you now. That read is the starting point, not the result. Understanding a belief doesn't retire it. What changes it is repetition inside a relationship where the old rule keeps getting tested and keeps not producing the outcome you braced for. Over months that builds a different set of expectations, and those are what you actually operate from under pressure. What changes: the response you default to when it counts, not just your explanation for it.
The business side
Some of what's stuck isn't in your head. It's in how the business runs: who you sell to, what happens after a deal closes, what each person is supposed to own.
That's the side Sam works on with you: winning customers, keeping them and building the team behind the growth.
- Who it's for Any business that is at least partly online, from an established company to a startup that wants to get online and grow.
- Where you start You decide: build the structure with Sam if it isn't there yet, or fix the part that keeps breaking.
- Who's in the room You, or the people who run your sales and service teams.
What you can work on with Sam
Whatever matters most to you right now. The kind of questions you can bring:
Customers and offer.
Who is your ideal customer? What should you charge, and how should you package it?
From sale to delivery.
What happens between a signed deal and the work starting? Where could you be selling more to the customers you already have? How do you keep the clients you win?
Growth and marketing.
Where do new customers come from, and which channels are worth your time? How do you get online, or get more out of being online?
People and accountability.
How do you hire the right person and set them up to succeed? How does everyone know what they own, and how does it get checked without you chasing it?
Written guides for every role.
If someone left tomorrow, would the work survive? What should each role and department have written down so nothing falls apart when people change?
Automation and AI.
Which tools are worth it, and what should you automate first, once the process itself works?
It works best going deep on two or three of these rather than touching all of them. What you leave with depends on what you bring: a blueprint for how a part of the business runs, a price list, a checklist for what happens after a sale, a way to compare job candidates, a written guide for a role, a weekly routine your team actually keeps.
Whatever gets built is written down and stays with your team.
Each session is a working conversation.
Sam asks a lot of questions, gives you a straight answer when you want one, and the work gets drafted in the session or between them. You leave with next steps, and so does he.
What we hear most often
Seven things come up in almost every first conversation. Each one has already cost something.
The thing you decided three months ago still hasn't happened.
You made the call. It just never got executed, and every week it waits it gets more expensive: the hire who's now been underperforming for two quarters, the pricing change your competitor shipped first, the conversation that would have been awkward in March and will be a resignation in September.
You run the whole trial before you'll make the call.
What if the data's incomplete. What if the obvious answer is obvious for a reason nobody's said out loud.
Eventually you ask someone with less context than you, because what you want isn't information. It's permission, and it was always yours to give.
Meanwhile the window closes, and not deciding turns out to have been the decision.
Everything still comes back to you.
Work routes through you because the standard matters and you're the one who set it. Your calendar has become the bottleneck for a company that's supposed to be scaling past you.
Handing it off feels like risking the thing you built, so the company grows to the edge of your capacity and stops.
Delegating feels like losing control of what you built.
You'd hand things off if you could name what to hand off, and to whom. But scoping the role, writing the profile, and trusting someone with a piece of your company each feel like their own risk, so it stays with you.
The cost shows up later, as evenings that belong to work and a version of the job you no longer enjoy.
Loyalty starts to carry a quiet cost.
Early contributors built the foundation, but scaling often requires a different skill set. It's natural to feel protective of those who helped you get here, yet keeping someone in a role they've outgrown can quietly weigh on the rest of the team and compromise the standard.
Every downturn becomes a referendum on your judgment.
A hire that was right during growth looks like evidence of bad judgment when conditions change. Layoffs are the worst version: not a hard decision, but one that feels like it will be read as proof you were wrong from the start.
What it costs you is the next decision, which you make smaller than it should be.
You hit the number and felt almost nothing.
Relief for a day. Then the bar moves.
Nobody optimizes well while paying down a debt that doesn't clear. And when the weight never comes off, stepping back or selling starts to look less like a strategy and more like an exit from your own calendar.
Asian American founders & executives who run a business or a team
Nothing above is unique to Asian Americans. What's often different is the intensity, and where the beliefs came from: families where the stakes involved sacrifice, filial duty, and face.
What the research shows, and what we work on
- What the numbers show. Asian Americans are among the most likely groups to be hired into professional roles and among the least likely to be promoted into management, the pattern often called the bamboo ceiling.
- What isn't yours to fix. Some of that is bias and organizational dynamics you did not create and cannot fix from the inside. Carrying it as a personal failing is its own cost.
- What we work on. The gap between how you were raised to operate and what these environments are set up to reward. We start by helping you tell the difference.
That second part is workable, and it still isn't simply a matter of information. Most leaders already know they should speak up sooner and ask more directly.
Knowing has never been the hard part.
Composure read as absence of leadership
Restraint and a preference for harmony were strengths where you learned them. In American executive settings they get described as lacking presence or vision, even when your judgment is the soundest in the room.
Assertion that once cost someone
Speaking plainly isn't a skill you're missing. It's something you learned early would upset, burden, or drive away someone who mattered.
The behavior isn't absent. It's prohibited.
Leaving as abandonment
Ending a role, a partnership, or a project can carry the weight of a much earlier separation. The result is staying long past the point of fit and calling it obligation.
Carrying it alone
If needing help once meant being a burden, your board is underused, your executive team is underused, and you're carrying what the structure was built to share.
Failure your family will absorb
A pivot or a shutdown isn't only a business outcome. It's something your family will interpret and carry, which can make a rational decision to stop feel impossible.
If we're not the right fit, we'll tell you on the intro call and point you toward someone who is.
Danny has spent his career with Asian American founders and executives. Sam is second generation himself: Persian parents, born and raised in Sweden, an immigrant to the US at thirty.
How it works and what it costs
No assessment to buy first. A free call, then the work.
Prices
Intro call
You tell us what's stuck and decide whether it's right for you.
The work itself starts in the first sessions.
Where to start
In your first session with each of us, you bring what matters most: to Danny, the pattern you keep running into; to Sam, the part of the business that's stuck. You decide where to start, and the plan for the quarter keeps changing as the work does.
Before the first session
You'll sign a short information-sharing agreement setting out what stays with Danny and what the two of us discuss.
Who you'd be working with
Mind
Danny Liu, PsyD · Executive Coach
Founder of a Manhattan practice working with high-achieving Asian American professionals: founders, executives, attorneys, engineers, and creatives.
More about Danny
- The patterns he works on. For the past decade: perfectionism, difficulty self-advocating, overextended responsibility, and the family expectations that shape how they lead.
- Who he works with now. Most of his current clients are already CEOs, founders, and entrepreneurs. They come to him because the psychology they bring into the building shapes how they lead, decide, and hold up under pressure, and that part doesn't resolve by getting better at management.
- Why the read is fast. A decade of clinical work with high-achieving professionals means these patterns are familiar before a client finishes describing them: what's underneath, what it's protecting, and where it tends to go if nothing changes.
- The research behind it. His doctoral research examined shame and self-esteem in Chinese American families. It informs how he reads what's driving a pattern rather than just naming it.
- How long clients stay. The executives and CEOs he works with typically stay for years rather than months, a working relationship that keeps producing value and growth.
- Outside the practice. Featured by ABC News. Runs Beyond the Surface, a psychoeducation channel for the Asian American community.
- Background. The son of Chinese immigrants, he grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area and was the first in his family to attend college.
PsyD, Clinical Psychology · Licensed psychologist in NY, NJ & CA
Mechanism
Sam Hirbod · Executive Coach
Direct, with care. Sam asks a lot of questions and teaches the why behind each fix, so your team can keep going without him.
More about Sam
- Building from scratch. Founded the web analytics and digital marketing offering at Knowit in Stockholm and got Knowit into Google's partner program. Then built it into a department: hired and led a team of five, ran its finances and grew the business eightfold.
- Nine years at HubSpot. Working with the agencies that partner with HubSpot, one of the largest sales and marketing software companies, on how they sell, keep their clients and grow.
- Leading inside a larger company. Stepped in as manager of a HubSpot team covering North and Latin America: sales forecasts, weekly one-to-ones, hiring interviews and training new people, while still looking after his own clients.
- The commercial side. Responsible for more than $4M in partner business today: keeping and growing accounts, negotiating contracts and stepping in when one is at risk. He also built the workload models that showed when to hire.
- Teaching. Selected by Google to lead country-wide trainings in Sweden, and spoke to more than 3,000 people at a Grow with Google event co-hosted with Almi, Sweden's business development agency. Recorded training lessons for HubSpot Academy, HubSpot's online school.
- Automation. Built ten AI agents in everyday use at HubSpot: they warn when a client may leave, review sales deals, write performance reports and flag missing or wrong data.
- Recognition. Among HubSpot's top performers: awards four years running (2023 to 2026), including President's Club 2024, number one in his role in North America that year, and a 2026 recognition for turning his work into AI agents.
- His own clients. Recommendations from Sam's individual coaching are on samhirbod.com, and more are public on LinkedIn.
MSc, Business Administration & International Economics (Sweden, Spain) · Certified Executive Coach, Center for Executive Coaching · Professional Coaching, Wellcoaches · Certificate of Leadership Excellence in Leading Teams, Harvard Division of Continuing Education
Common questions about executive coaching
How much does executive coaching cost with Mind & Mechanism?
The intro call is free, and there is no separate assessment fee. Each coach bills his own sessions from his own practice.
Danny Liu and Sam Hirbod each charge $650 a session, and Sam's includes the drafting and building he does between sessions. With both weekly for the first 90 days, that is $1,300 a week.
After day 90, you and Sam decide how often his sessions continue, from two to four a month, so $1,300 to $2,600. Our first three clients pay a founding price of $1,000 a week for both coaches for the first 90 days, $500 a session each, in exchange for a written testimonial at day 90 and one introduction.
Both rates are confirmed in writing before the engagement begins.
What happens on the intro call?
Thirty minutes with both coaches, at no charge. You tell us what is stuck.
We explain how the program works, who does what and what it costs, and you decide whether it is right for you. We won't try to solve the problem on the call.
That work starts in the first sessions, where each of us looks at it from our own side and the plan for the quarter gets built with you.
Why two coaches instead of one?
Because the two halves of a stuck pattern are different jobs. A belief that makes the old behavior feel necessary is psychological work.
A business without the structure to support it is an operations problem. Danny Liu works on the belief.
Sam Hirbod works with you on the business. Keeping them separate means each of us stays inside what we were trained for.
What does Sam work on?
The business side: how a company that is at least partly online sells, delivers and runs. That can mean your ideal customer and pricing, what happens after a sale, selling more to the customers you have, keeping the clients you win, growth and marketing, hiring and accountability, written guides for each role, and which tools and AI to use.
You choose where to start. If the structure isn't there, you and Sam build it together.
If it is, you work on the part that keeps breaking. It works best going deep on two or three areas rather than touching all of them, and whatever gets built is written down and stays with your team.
Is this therapy?
No. Mind & Mechanism provides executive coaching, not therapy, psychotherapy, or clinical assessment, and no diagnosis is provided.
Danny Liu is a licensed psychologist, but coaching is a separate service: he does not provide both to the same client and does not accept current or former psychotherapy clients into coaching engagements. Coaching conversations are confidential but are not covered by HIPAA or therapist-patient privilege.
Who is Mind & Mechanism for?
Asian American founders and executives who run a business or a team and have been stuck on the same thing for a while. Some can name exactly what is in the way.
Others just know something isn't moving. What matters most is having somewhere for the work to land: a team, a board, or a P&L where real decisions are in front of you this quarter.
Is this coaching for the bamboo ceiling?
Partly. The bamboo ceiling describes how Asian Americans are often hired into professional roles but rarely promoted into leadership.
Some of that is bias you can't fix from the inside. We work on the part you can: the gap between how you were raised to operate and what these settings reward, and the business you run.
Do I have to work with both coaches?
Yes, for the first 90 days. The program is built around both tracks running together, and after the first quarter each track continues on its own terms.
If what you need is only the psychological work, Danny sees clients through his own practice. If it is only the business side, Sam does the same.
We'll help you figure out which fits on the intro call.
Do you coach Asian American executives in New York City?
Yes. Danny Liu's practice is in Manhattan, and sessions are in person there or remote, whichever suits your week.
Do you work with founders in San Francisco and Silicon Valley?
Yes, remotely and scheduled around Pacific time. Danny grew up in the Bay Area and is licensed in California, and Sam works with startups and online businesses wherever they are based.
Is there a minimum commitment?
Yes. The program runs as a fixed 90-day engagement with both coaches, weekly with each.
Ninety days is the shortest period in which a belief can be tested enough times to shift and a new operating system can hold, so neither coach takes clients for less. After the first quarter, Danny's sessions continue by agreement at a weekly cadence, and Sam Hirbod's engagement continues month to month, renewing automatically until you give 30 days' written notice.
What happens after 90 days?
The quarter closes with a review against the goals you set in the first sessions: what changed, and what the next quarter should focus on. From there, Danny Liu's weekly sessions continue by agreement, with nothing billed automatically on his side.
Sam Hirbod's sessions continue month to month, two to four a month as you agree, and renew automatically until you give 30 days' written notice. You can stop either track, or both, and keep everything already built.
Start with a free intro call
A short call to get to know us before you commit to anything. Tell us what's stuck, in you or in the business, ask whatever you want to ask, and see whether the way we work suits you.
You'll leave knowing what working with us would look like and what it costs.
- 30 minutes, with both coaches
- Free, and no commitment
- We reply within two business days to set a time
- Founding price for our first three clients: $1,000 a week for both of us
- Danny Liu, PsyD Licensed psychologist in New York, New Jersey and California. Featured by ABC News.
- Sam Hirbod Has coached the founders and leadership teams of 200+ agencies. Businesses he's coached have grown revenue by up to 600% in their first five months with him.