Paul is no longer the CEO of Aboard. Rich and Paul have switched positions, as the criteria with being the CEO of Aboard includes a lot of accountability to investors and outside actors.

Hey Rich.

Hey

Paul.

So last episode we talked about how I am now the CEO of a board and that

I have a lot of new responsibilities.

I need to, you know, you gimme some coaching.

I'm holding people accountable.

That was really helpful.

Thank you.

Yeah, no problem.

And, uh, so, you know, I've been working on it for the

last five, six days and I think I'm doing a pretty good job.

And, uh, you've been, you've been here with me, so I thought, you know, in

this episode we could talk about how I'm doing as CEO and you could gimme like

my one week performance review and we could, we could talk about what's next.

Um, we need to talk,

uh, that sounded really ominous.

Um, but is there something you'd like to tell me?

you are not gonna be ceo.

We've decided to remove you from the job.

But this, thank you.

This was my only dream in my life.

Yeah.

Well, well, we appreciate everything you've done.

Uh, but yeah,

Can I, can I get a package?

No.

no.

We didn't even have time to put on the golden handcuffs.

there's no contract.

We , there's nothing.

Okay.

So we should explain what.

Um, I am not the CEO of a board anymore.

That is what happened.

And uh, uh, rich is gonna be the ceo.

I'm gonna be the president.

So pretty good for me.

A little nice consolation prize.

We're switching roles.

Um, And we're doing this for a specific reason, which is that, so last job

that we had together, we ran an agency.

I was the ceo and it was a very storytelling role.

I went out and I talked about things and uh, it was a bootstrap firm.

We had full control over it.

And so basically it was like, here I am thinker about technology and I go out and

I talk to companies and I talk to people and I explain what I think is going on

in the world and I talk about what we do.

And now is a very.

Classic C e O agency type of thing.

Yes.

So we repeated that.

We did that again when we were building this firm.

Mm-hmm.

. And then you went for a walk and you had a thought, because we're going

out and we're talking to investors and we're talking strategically.

What happens after you get investment rich?

You

have to.

On the held of the business, you have to, you're accountable to other owners.

Uh, this is the thing worth highlighting about the agency that we had together.

It was a closely held agency.

There were no other outside investors.

There was no board, there was no reporting requirements in terms of, you

know, we gotta show you the spreadsheets or, and the, you know, the, the

numbers on a, some regular interval.

There was none of that.

So it's, it's not just the idea being accountable doesn't

bother But what is the, how, what form does the accountability take?

It's, it can be tough, right?

Well, first off, some people love being in presentations.

Some people love writing code, and some people love.

Math and spreadsheets.

And there's a good number of, there's a good amount of combing

through numbers, rolling up numbers, tell, you know, the drier side of

PowerPoint, uh, of reporting, frankly how the progress of the business.

And so that's, that's stuff that

not my first.

Not your first love or second love probably, but I think

I'm good at that if I need to

You're good at that, if you need to be, but I think more than that

is you end up, you know, the dynamic is, is one of a healthy suspicion,

, they're invested in your business.

They're not.

Looking over your shoulder every day.

And so the conversations can actually get pretty tricky and tough.

Right?

And, and, and that's because they're looking out for their investment.

They're not trying to be jerks.

Some are jerks, but that's separate.

Um, and so the, the, the kind of the protocol there fits me be better than you

Straight up, right?

Like that's a, it's a big part of our dynamic.

You're a former lawyer, you're light on your feet, you like a fight, and you don't

mind preparing for one, and you don't.

Afterwards you're like, cool, let's go get a beer.

For me, as we started, talk about what these means are gonna be

like and how we need to present the company, I'm like, all right.

That's two weeks of emotional, intellectual energy for every meeting

followed by two weeks of come down.

That's just my wiring.

And so you looked at me, you're like, I went for a walk.

I don't think you should be ceo.

And I went, oh that's interesting.

And you were like, you described this situation.

And that's, that is what people expect the CEO to come to that meeting.

They don't wanna see the president or anybody else.

president.

Yes.

And I went, yep, that is correct.

I should not be the ceo.

That was pretty much how it went down

pretty much how it went now.

Well, I it's worth noting for people that don't know us too well.

We are, we are not tied up in the status or the power that comes from these titles.

It's not interesting to

but you gotta be, you gotta be careful there, right?

Because this is what I learned before I took on the job the last time

going like, well, not really a ceo, but I'll, I'll do it because we need

somebody to have this role, the agency.

Guess what happens when you're like a tall guy who says you're a ceo?

Oh, yes, you are.

You are the

It turns out you are the ceo.

You're gonna eat all the shit, just like anybody.

And so like, so the, the titles are, we don't internalize them.

Except as here we are trying to make this company move forward.

Um, but the world sees them as representative of the company.

We we're very mindful of that for the kind of company we're about to become

one that has investors, one that's out in the world, one where there's a lot

of motion and a lot of different actors from outside of the company involved.

Uh, you are absolutely the right person to

person.

Yeah.

And, and which we can, we can dive into our own personalities and why this

is better, but what is it better for?

It is better for the startup, for the business, and I, I think if there.

One piece of advice that's worth sharing in this podcast.

It's put aside your own interests and everybody has their own.

That's not bad.

You shouldn't be ashamed of being ambitious or having your own interests.

a little weird to announce to the company and the world that I am the

ceo, and then six days later say, I'm not.

That's if you were to say, what do I not want in a ceo?

It's someone who resigns after six days.

That's like, that's like British politics,

It is like, it's not good, but it's what's

right for the broader endeavor.

And it's what we made a clear cut.

Also, we're early, uh, we can do this now, like let's do it now.

Before it's like, oh shit, wait,

Also, everybody knows us in the company and will give us the

benefit of the doubt on this decision.

It looks a little chaotic, but it's also like, well, they're kind of

chaotic and there's 15 people here.

Okay.

Go buy a laptop.

Great.

Like a nice.

It's got the CPU in it.

Okay.

And that's cool.

You can do, you can do your spreadsheets and you can do really important work

with it, but now you want to play a game or you want to edit a film.

What, what happens to that laptop?

It becomes a panini

right?

So if you want to do something that gets really high,

it's real hot, it's slow, it's sweating.

You are the CPU in that laptop.

You can, enormous amount can get done.

You can organize things and so on.

But for that really good, exciting, more expensive experience, what do you need,

Ray Tracing

do.

What do you have to buy on, on eBay or on uh, on Amazon?

You need a big chunky graphics card.

Thick

Cpu, multiple processors, a million little processors going at once.

raw horsepower.

If you wanna understand the dynamic between Rich and me, which

sadly people do because they listen to this podcast, that is the dynamic.

I'm the graphics guard.

Yeah.

I, and it literally plays out in this way.

Let's say, um, we'll go into a meeting.

I'll go with you.

We're, we're, we're going as a team.

I'll say, I'll say plenty.

I, I'm not sitting in silence, but I will say maybe one fifth as much as you

I tend to drive and really engage conversation.

A good example

is,

I will offer 20 times to help you on a.

Yeah,

And you, and I'm like, the way that I see our relation and you say no,

you're like, I'll give it to you soon.

And the way that I see our relationship is like, I'm gonna continue to offer.

And when you say, no, that's fine.

I've offered, I don't mind not doing the work.

It's fine.

I'll, I'll see

yeah, yeah.

No,

you're organizing your life and your thinking

by getting that deck together.

So in we go, you present the deck.

It is your brain turned into keynote.

Yeah, we should do a special episode just on keynote at some point

because it's one of your great loves and uh, and so you're driving.

I'm listening.

I can't really read the room in the moment.

I'm just sort of like taking it all in.

Uh, and we walk out of there and you're like, I think that went well.

And I'm like, yeah, I think it went, went well too.

And then I wake up the next morning and I hate you on slack

with like five bullet points.

And need

time to synthesize what went down.

but my five bullet points tend to be things that will get us to move

along a lot faster in the relationship.

Like I tend to see stuff

well also,

I, I, I haven't gotten all, I, I will tell you I've got all the

answers a minute after a meeting ends, but I don't have them.

Like, I, I got a few wrong probably.

Like I, it needs a minute.

I, I, by the way, I need that time too, but I'm more inclined

to your analogy, fire off Instruc.

No, that's

In real time.

in the

now we're gonna create a deeper, more rich,

3D interactive experience.

And I show up.

Right.

And it's, you can still, and it all works fine, but like, you, you, so that's,

that's the value that I'm bringing.

In a funny way, that was, uh, as an agency leader and agency

head that kind of made sense.

Lots of parallel things going on, and, you know, it was very, very

much about different experiences.

I'm getting kind of abstract, but for this particular thing, we need to go back

to the old, like bolt on the, the gpu.

And here we go.

So I'll be president, you'll be c uh, you'll be ceo.

And, uh, let me read, I think just for kicks, I'll read the slack

message I sent to our company because I can't, we, we couldn't

just announce this on the podcast.

We told we do things in a very specific sequence.

We tell management and then we tell the company.

So, hi everyone.

Quick, someone hilarious update.

I am no longer the CEO of a board.

Rich Citi will be.

This is a really sensible decision.

Here's why.

As we talk to more investors, it's super clear that a big part of our future will

be presenting our financials and strategy on a regular basis to groups of people

with MBAs whose actual job is to attack us and force us to defend every decision.

Investors will expect the CEO to show up to those meetings.

Problem is I hate that work and I'm bad at it.

Whereas Rich likes getting in a room and fighting with people

wearing expensive blue shirts.

So we talked about it and decided to switch roles.

I'm President Rich as ceo.

I enjoyed serving as your chief executive officer and feel lucky that I had the job.

It was the best six days of my career,

job, . There we

so let's turn that into, this is Zion.

Ford Advisors turn into a little advice.

What do you got?

I mean, the first is pretty straightforward, which is

this had nothing to do with you or me

We put the organization forward.

We, we, the interests of the org were put ahead of anyone

else and the higher up you go, the higher up the chain you go.

The more important it is to put aside your own interests, uh, and

make them second to the interests of the, of the broader thing, the,

the, the, the company, frankly.

And, and this look, I, I just to, just to put it in the transcript.

I'd rather not do this.

Uh, I, I don't, I'm not looking forward to it, but I'll do it.

and, and like, I, like I have now offered 20 or 30

times, I will help you prepare for each one of these meetings.

I'm ready, I'm ready to help you with the deck.

Rich, you just have to share the keynote

I will share, I'm gonna share more.

Rich has, even putting it on on iCloud is hard.

Yeah.

Um, no, I think, like, you know, I got your back on this.

The other piece of advice I would like to give based on this, and it's a little, I

think what people are gonna expect me to say is different than what I'm gonna say.

What you're gonna expect me to say is this, Hey, you know, always be honest

and transparent about where your limits are, and it's worth it to communicate it.

That's best for everyone.

Okay.

That's not my actual advice.

Sometimes that's very dangerous.

be very careful if somebody says, Hey, do you want to do this?

You should usually say, I'd really like to try that rather, or,

to learn, or whatever.

Here's what's D.

Here's what I'm actually saying.

Build relationships in the workplace where people know and understand each

other's limits and are respectful of them, and work to compensate

and balance each other out.

The only way that we could have this dynamic, and I would feel

comfortable going in front of the company and saying, guess what?

I'm not your ceo, is because there's a tremendous amount of trust.

There is no hidden agenda between the two

no, you said this.

And I was like, yeah, that is what's best for a board.

Yeah.

Well, it was kind of funny to have the title twice in a row, but that's that.

this was also like we're talking, we talked about this less than we

talked about it on the podcast.

It was about a five minute decision for

was a five minute decision.

Uh, if, if you're in a setting, You're on the defensive because you're

wondering what people's agendas are.

That's not the best place to be.

Look, humans are political by nature.

Self-interest is

I like the idea of being the CEO of a successful startup

and then figuring, I would kind of stand down when we found some Dutch

person to run it later, you know?

Yeah, I mean, so if you're in that setting where it feels like it's

hard to navigate multiple sources of.

Power.

Yeah,

let's call 'em that.

Uh, that's tough.

That's tougher than, okay.

We all are on one.

That's why good companies and good leaders are very mission driven.

They talk about the aspirations of the thing more than they talk about

themselves or their teams or whatever.

We're all serving a larger purpose, and yes, it's a company, it's for for-profit

business, but it's still a larger

Well, and it's still humans interacting.

If you look around and you say, boy, you know, I think I could do that job,

but it would be really hard for me.

Maybe someone else could do it.

And then you go, I don't even want to talk about that right now.

Send our resumes.

Yeah.

Yeah, because you're, you're, you're, you've effectively, your tell there

is that this is a hostile place.

This is a place that's not gonna support in the interest of the larger

This is the, the point I wanna make is like, and, and because as we're

saying it, I want to get it really clear.

It's good to be vulnerable and transparent.

A lot of places don't allow for that.

And so that's right.

Go find places where you can be vulnerable and transparent.

which isn't easy, but

Yes.

And don't think you can fix a place that isn't

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

it's one of the hardest possible things to do.

So that was, uh, I think, you know, we did okay here.

I really enjoyed being CEO for five, six days.

just thank you for your service.

Like honestly, we wouldn't be here without

you.

I was like

is Wednesday,

It was exactly, I was a little bit bummed, but

then tremendously relieved.

. No, because I wasn't thinking, you and I both, we weren't

thinking about those meetings.

And then when you said though, it's like, Hey, there's a lot of this

coming for me and coming for you.

I went, oh yeah, there

is.

Yeah.

By the way, after our conversation, I was a little bit bummed.

Oh, I know.

But a tremendous amount of relief

Yeah, yeah,

like for all involved, right?

Like so it all worked out.

out.

It's all really good.

This is the Zian Ford Advisors podcast,

I'm Paul Ford, the former CEO of a board, now retired

I'm Rich Citi, the newly appointed CEO O of a

Hey, congratulations.

to tho.

For those that don't know, we have a startup called Aboard.

We said the word very casually.

Uh, you can check it out@aboard.com and we have an ABOARD podcast as well.

Uh, hit us up.

Hey, we've been, we got the mailbag full.

We gotta read some

We should read some messages.

It's actually kind of fun.

Um, and we're at Citi Ford on Twitter.

We love you.

Hello, it's ci ford.com.

Talk to you soon.

you soon.

Take care.