Most Chiefs of Staff leave for a bigger title or more money. Lissa Sorgenfrei left to open a pottery studio. After eight years at German construction tech startup Capmo, where she moved from customer success to product management to Chief of Staff to go-to-market strategy, Lissa hit a wall. The problem wasn't burnout or bad leadership. It was realizing that the full-spectrum visibility she craved as CoS couldn't exist in any other traditional role. So she ran experiments, reduced to four days a week, and eventually traded spreadsheets for clay.

Host: Tristan Lim, Chief of Staff Network Fellow and Founder at Beyond Founders

Guest: Lissa Sorgenfrei, Founder, Munich Clay Collective (former Chief of Staff at Capmo)

About Lissa Sorgenfrei

Lissa is the daughter of a Japanese mother and German father, raised in Germany with two cultural frameworks shaping how she sees the world. She studied business engineering with a focus on civil construction, originally dreaming of becoming an architect. She joined Capmo as one of the first employees during her studies, staying for eight years across multiple roles including functions in product, GTM and Chief of Staff. Now she runs Munich Clay Collective, a pottery studio in Munich designed around sensory experience and community.

Lessons Learned

The Chief of Staff role is inherently lonely, but not because you're isolated. You have full access to information across the company and behind closed doors, but you can't share most of it. You're trusted by employees and the CEO, but you're also filtering constantly. The only person who knows everything you know is yourself. That isolation is a feature of the role, not a bug.

Losing transparency after being CoS is harder than most people expect. Moving from a role where you knew everything the CEO knew to a narrower function, even one with leadership responsibility, feels like giving up "the sweet taste of nectar." Lissa struggled with this transition more than the actual work itself. If you've been CoS, prepare for that loss when you move on.

Good Chiefs of Staff make people feel seen. Lissa discovered her strength wasn't in process design or strategic planning, but in making employees feel valued and heard. This translated into motivation, retention, and culture sustainability as the company scaled. The interpersonal work isn't soft skills. It's leverage.

Being resourceful is a superpower, but it can also get in your way. Chiefs of Staff learn to solve undefined problems by finding the right people and dissecting challenges quickly. That same instinct can lead to over-optimization in areas where simplicity is better. Sometimes the best solution is just to drive 15 hours straight to Italy.

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