What a Hired Operator Sees That You Can't | Bethany Ayers

Bethany Ayers, CEO of Metomic, has scaled businesses from the inside - as COO, CRO, and now CEO - and she has a very clear view of what founders get wrong when they think they need to hand the keys over. The insight she shares here will make most founders rethink the decision they're about to make.

What does an experienced operator see that a founder typically can't? Bethany and James cover the vanity activities that distract from fundamentals, why senior hires fail more often than you'd expect, and the single question you have to answer before you bring anyone into the C-suite. The episode ends with a practical framework for choosing between a COO and a CEO  and it starts with your shit list.

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Connect with James on LinkedIn or at peer-effect.com 

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Are there certain things that you see play out on a regular basis that founders it'd be helpful to be aware of as they're doing it themselves?

SPEAKER_01 0:08

So I think often founders, because they've come in with a bit of romanticism, because we all have focus on not necessarily vanity metrics, but vanity activities.

SPEAKER_00 0:20

But it's quite hard, I think, for founders when they're so in the moment and they're busy and they're in a rush and thing to actually pay attention to that inkling sometime because it's like, I don't really have time to fully explore.

SPEAKER_01 0:29

It's interesting, just like they're too, you know, I'm too busy, I can't be bothered. That's just the pushing it all down until something erupts and being afraid of the pain, but the pain is never going to go away. Then you're just giving yourself pain around pain. And so taking the time and being brave and walking through the fire to the other side releases so much. And then you can make better decisions and lead a more purposeful life.

SPEAKER_00 1:08

Hi, I'm James Johnson, founder and CEO coach, and this is the Pure Effect Podcast, where your peers will tell you what's unlocking their 10 million plus business. Today, Beth and I are going to explore what a hired operator can see that a founder can't. Before we start, please hit subscribe so you don't miss any episodes on whatever platform you're listening on. And now, on with the show. So, Beth, welcome to the show.

SPEAKER_01 1:33

Great. Thanks for having me today. I'm looking forward to it.

SPEAKER_00 1:36

Well, we're going to jump into like what sort of hired operators can see that founders can't, which is very relevant to what you've been through. But I hear you've also, if we start, a bit of interest in pottery.

SPEAKER_01 1:47

I have. Well, I think I've already passed through the pottery stage and now I'm into houseplants.

SPEAKER_00 1:52

Right.

SPEAKER_01 1:52

I didn't plan it that way, but I had a lot of spare pots, and now I have a lot of plants to put in the pots.

SPEAKER_00 1:59

Nice.

SPEAKER_01 1:59

Yeah. I um but just as a bit of a background. So I've ended up doing three big roles in my career and then taken a year or two out in between each role. The first time was definite burnout. Um, five years building a cloud contact center company called New Voice Media. And I started with a two-month-old and a two-year-old.

SPEAKER_00 2:22

Wow.

SPEAKER_01 2:23

And towards the last 18 months, I was traveling to San Francisco a week and every six, and just got utterly exhausted. Um, so left, not knowing what I ever wanted to do again, ended up taking two years out. My mother was diagnosed with motor neuron disease the day I left. So I had nine months of her dying. I reconnected and met my children, um, and then did a CRO role, some other bits and pieces, and then joined Peak, did a whole run there, left, and said kind of that 4,000 weeks of what are you going to do with your life? What's the meaning of life? Didn't know what I was going to do next, but wanted to just explore. So that's when I got into pottery, I got into writing, I started a podcast, um, I joined five boards, possibly other things that I can't remember right now, and then transitioned into being a CEO. So I've always taken these career breaks along the way.

SPEAKER_00 3:23

I like how your career break, the last one involved doing so much. It's kind of like, I think it was that just took some time off, just do some pottery, reconnect. It was like, and five boards.

SPEAKER_01 3:35

I have a lot of energy, love learning, love being creative, love meeting people, and just had a great time exploring so much. I was kind of the opposite of they tell you, you know, focus on one thing and really achieve it. But because I didn't know what I wanted to achieve and I just wanted to explore, I focused on as many things as I possibly could.

SPEAKER_00 3:55

So I'm curious back clips of using the sort of Steve Jobs join the dots backwards talk, it feels like your progression to this point as a CEO, if you'd gone, if you'd planned it, would kind of be imperfect. Do you think like to scale a business, you need to get sort of the growth side right and the execution side right? You spend a lot of time both on sort of go-to-market and growth, but you've also spent time on the execution side as a CEO. And when does that lead you to feel very well equipped now to step into a CEO role?

SPEAKER_01 4:21

Oh, yeah, completely. Um, and I didn't necessarily know at the start of my career that I wanted to be a CEO. So this will completely age me. But when I was young, I watched Wall Street, you know, the movie with Michael Douglas. And I can't remember what the woman was in it, but she was the she had a MBA BA, like joint degree from Harvard, and she was in her amazing suits and she was powerful. And I just was like, I want to be her. I grew up in New Mexico, nobody was in business, everybody's a scientist or in the Air Force. And I didn't really know what the difference is between finance and anything else, but I was just like, I want to live in a major city, wear a suit and be important.

SPEAKER_00 5:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 5:05

And make a lot of money. Um, and that that was the direction I went in.

SPEAKER_00 5:10

Nice. What was what was your favorite suit so far then?

SPEAKER_01 5:14

Oh, I think by the time I actually so I I started in the corporate world, realized very quickly I hated it, loved the startup scene, have always been interested in that. And so I don't I haven't worn many suits. I've ended up way more in the in the slightly geeky tech startups place instead.

SPEAKER_00 5:30

Aaron Powell Maybe it's that scientist, the subtle scientist influence of your surroundings that have called out to you.

SPEAKER_01 5:35

And from New Mexico, you know, we're just not very fancy people.

SPEAKER_00 5:39

Yeah.

unknown 5:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 5:40

So stepping up to you then, if you if you have been so well prepared, what has been sort of an un unexpected challenge as a CEO, maybe?

SPEAKER_01 5:47

Aaron Powell So I think there's a difference between being a founder CEO and being a professional CEO. I struggle to say professional CEO because I feel like I'm doing this for the first time, but that's what we're called. Is you're taking on somebody else's baby. And there is definitely an element of not made here itis for me. It's like, well, I would do it this way and I wouldn't do it that way. And yeah, just the challenges of having stepped into somebody else's mess. I shouldn't say that maybe. Yeah, somebody else's pre-built structure.

SPEAKER_00 6:19

But I I think we do have mess. I mean, I think we if we're moving at a pace, we create mess, don't we? And I think I think that's that's also sort of from the challenge of founders going, letting gunning someone else in to go, oh, what's someone else going to discover? Maybe I'm I give this sort of shiny reality to the outside world and maybe I'm not brilliant across everything.

SPEAKER_01 6:36

Yeah, I I think so. And then there's also just a lot of founders are first-time everything. And you know you have to learn along the way. Because I think going back to your original question, is what as an operator, what do I know that a founder might not? And I don't think it's like being an operator or not. I think it's just a function of having more experience. And so a founder with loads of experience will know as much as I do. So I wonder if that's totally true.

SPEAKER_00 7:03

So I I work with quite a few founders on that transition from like founder to CEO. And it feels like a lot of founders come in with a they're expert in a thing. And they and they often start a business because of their great at that thing. And sort of managerial skills, the if we call it professional CEO, the professional side of it, I mean, for founders often is not as strong. Uh and you see that with CEOs of businesses, whether it's founders or CEOs, often they're being progressed through being good at a thing rather than being good at like management or other stuff. So I'm wondering whether that only coming in with that sort of outsider perspective, you are bringing skills even at the same experience that they that they might not have.

SPEAKER_01 7:42

I think it just depends on what what they've been doing. So I've definitely had founders or worked and seen founders who've had a wide career beforehand and that have a completely different set of skills than somebody who's become a founder fairly early on in their career. And also has also sometimes never worked at a bigger company or never worked at a company.

SPEAKER_03 8:01

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 8:02

And therefore, whether or not they were running it, they just have no idea. I see a lot of reinventing of basics that exist that if you had worked more, you would know exist. Yeah. Like performance management, you know?

SPEAKER_00 8:16

I suppose first about my career. I spent working for a multinational as a management specialist. And the first business I launched, I almost went against everything that I learned. I was like, oh, I'm going to do it completely differently. And then you quickly realize about six months in that all the things you learned, the disciplines you learned really do have a place. So I quickly sort of put them all back in again. All these things, oh, they're really boring basics.

SPEAKER_01 8:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:36

Are actually learned really quite critical.

SPEAKER_01 8:39

Yeah. Although they are still often boring and basic. Like one of the things on our podcast is the things I've come across an understanding of is the hard things are always hard and there are no silver bullets. So performance management, nobody does it really well. There are always hard things about it because fundamentally there's hard in it. OKRs, I don't know anybody other than OKR consultants who love them. You know, like they're they're like the best of a bad breed of bad things. So sometimes some of the boring stuff, it is the best that we have, but I can also understand why people don't like them because they're still pretty poor.

SPEAKER_00 9:16

So when you're coming in from this from an outside perspective, are there certain things that you see play out on a regular basis that founders it'd be helpful to be aware of as they're doing it themselves?

SPEAKER_01 9:30

So I think often founders, because they've come in with a bit of romanticism, because we all have, and we've all think that this startup world is super cool and we're going to be Google in the future, focus on not necessarily vanity metrics, but vanity activities. So part of it is how much have they raised and who have they raised it from? What's their PR presence like? Do they have the ping-pong table? Do they have a cool logo? And very much in the external trappings of what they think a good startup looks like rather than the fundamentals, like, do you have product market fit? Do you have a team that works well together? Are you putting scaffolding up around your original hires because you don't want to get rid of them because they're your cousin or your best friend or whatever? And so avoiding those by really focusing on the external?

SPEAKER_00 10:21

I hear those both those points. So that one's the look on like what success looks like rather than what it feels like. And then the sort of protecting the wrong people sometimes. How do you find that coming in when sort of there is an existing team and you've got there may be some favorites in there for various reasons? Do you find you'd get carte blanche to make changes, or is that often a challenge?

SPEAKER_01 10:45

So in my situation, I've had carte blanche to do whatever I want. Uh, the original founder CEO is completely out of the business. I think as a professional CEO, it's really hard when you have the original one hovering around, either still in the business in some sort of special projects or on the board meddling. Um, it's much easier in the position that I'm in where there is nobody who's going, well, I wouldn't do it that way. Or the reason why I did it that way is this, or let me just come in again. So I'm not in that position, but I have definitely seen that play out. And I've also seen where it's really hard to hire the right CEO and make that transition. And so there's been a lot of professional CEOs who fail. And that charismatic original founder visionary comes back in to turn things around. And because they are a better leader than they think they realize they are.

SPEAKER_00 11:39

So actually they've given some permission. They've tried it and give themselves permission to actually do it. Is that right?

SPEAKER_01 11:44

I think there's times where they get pressure from the board. Are they the right person? Can they professionalize it? You get to a point where it's plateaued and you need somebody else in. And I'm talking about businesses with a bit more scale. You see the story. And sometimes the new CEO comes in and it goes brilliantly, but quite often it doesn't. And because of that visionary CEO was really needed, understands the market. People have joined because of them, and they have created a good culture. And I often think boards get that wrong where they think it's the CEO, but really it might be the CEO has a blind spot around hiring better leadership and the leadership team needs to step up and not the CEO. And the CEO needs to step by by getting a better leadership team in place.

SPEAKER_00 12:30

Yeah, I mean, I've very recorded no excuses for whole things around the management management layer. I think when you go from startup scale up, the that injection, the management layer changes everything. And the child's founders often find themselves overwhelmed, not necessarily because they're micromanagers or they're they want to at all. They just rationally can't delegate because they don't have the team to delegate to. And so often you start, oh, I'm a micromanager, I don't have the skills for this. I need to find someone else. It's like, no, actually, you're great. They say there's some people skills you need to learn, but fundamentally you've got the wrong management layer to actually execute.

SPEAKER_01 13:04

But then the real problem is also again, I think you see founders, the original leadership team are friends and family. Yes. And there's there's a lot of trust in that. And they are capable people, but they're often not as, you know, nobody's experienced in the team. And then when you start to move in out of your network and having to use headhunters and figure it out and hire for new execs, it's really hard. The fail rate is 50%. And how you do it well, how you don't lose time or figure it out very quickly. Like it's a it's a real challenge, but it's absolutely necessary.

SPEAKER_00 13:44

I think it's worth acknowledging that the failure rate for new hires, pretty senior hires is higher just because you haven't hired it before. You don't necessarily know what to look for.

SPEAKER_01 13:52

And culture. So I think what ends up happening is first of all, they're senior because they were able to get to a certain point. They have good, soft skills, they're bright, but that doesn't mean that they're actually capable themselves. And so you need to do a lot of backdoor references, people who reported to them peers, not just the person they reported to. Dig into their background. But then the other part that's so hard is do you actually have shared values and shared leadership style? And I don't know how you do that in interview process because everybody's values, nobody's gonna be like, oh no, I hate open. I definitely don't want to be open trustworthy. No, that's not me. And so it's digging out for like what does it actually mean? What is your actual leadership style and what is theirs? And more often than not, it's a clash of leadership style than anything else that causes the failure, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_00 14:45

So when you so when you say clash of leader styles, just could you give a give an example to bring it to life?

SPEAKER_01 14:50

So fundamentally values, in that you're saying whatever your values are for the company, and the other person's like, yep, 100%, those are my values as well. But rather than saying, how do you lead? What do you value in leadership? And it's how do you day-to-day lead that makes a difference because the bigger your business gets, that leadership team needs to embody the culture of your organization. And every person will create a slightly different culture. But you need to make sure that they work together and that you don't end up with fiefdoms. The weird baggage that they take in and amplify throughout the business is weird baggage that works with yours. We all have weird baggage. We all have it. And we just need to make sure that whatever they bring into the business works with what you have in the business rather than chafes. So sometimes you do end up with somebody who can't actually do their job. But quite often it's like, oh, well, now this team won't work with anybody else, or whatever they're doing for how the managers they hire, everybody's quitting from that team. Or I thought that they were delivering, but now I discover it's all lies because what they care about more is vanity metrics and it's that next layer that you have to unpick to understand what's actually going on. And that's where the fail rate comes in.

SPEAKER_00 16:16

I think it's really it's helpful to acknowledge that up front, isn't it? Because I think it's intentional like, oh, I'm gonna hire someone senior. I need to trust them, I need to give them space, they're gonna be great. But actually, what we're saying is they're more likely to fail, probably, and therefore actually you should be closer in the first point so that you can really uncover those behaviors, uncover things, support them, but also correct fairly quickly if if it's not right.

SPEAKER_01 16:38

And get that spidey feeling. I find it really difficult to monitor those things, but not do their job for them. Because what I'm absolutely I have a few things that as soon as I notice, I'm like, there's a problem here. One is when a new hire takes more effort than they deliver back, regardless of seniority. But in a senior leader, that's a real issue if they need a lot of onboarding and they need a lot of because your interview process should give them all the context that they need. You need them to go and lead, but also verify that what they're doing is right. And then the other one is how much scaffolding do you have to put around a person? And that's normally where their weird baggage comes out. So the person who doesn't work well with others or makes a decision, but then reverts on that decision, or you end up having to hire three other people to support them, or you have to have a process that works for them. And it's all very subtle. And it then it becomes, oh, this is a person. It's not the yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:48

I I really feel that that sense of just you kind of making adjustments around someone to make the work like I'm gonna hire someone else here just to cover for that, or you can tweak that process. We need a better when the when the solution is a better process, I think that's often a a warning sign.

SPEAKER_01 18:01

Yeah. So those are the things that I look at for senior leadership hires.

SPEAKER_00 18:06

How do you manage to balance then that sense of you you want to give them you don't want them to take in more time than you, right? You want to have a good interview process, but you're staying close enough to see these things. How how do you get that right in those in those early stages?

SPEAKER_01 18:21

I don't think I do. I reflect a lot on it. I think it's definitely one of those areas that I'm not great at. I'm a big picture thinker. I don't really like detail. I don't like micromanagement. And so I don't always have that discipline that I need to really get in under the detail and end up picking it out somewhat through the rest of the team and their feedback when commitments stop being made. And then some of those other ones where it's like too much effort, what's going on? I wish I could say, right, here is my 90-day plan and it's super structured and ticking off the boxes, but I don't have that in me. And I also think in startups, people put in process inappropriately and too much structure that doesn't work because you have to be able to be flexible. So it means that you end up needing, for me at least, I shouldn't say you, for me, I need to be very aware and observant, but not ticking boxes or following a framework to figure it out.

SPEAKER_00 19:29

So there's a balance then between being consistent in how you approach people, but not be overly dogmatic in how you're doing, like not too checkbox.

SPEAKER_01 19:39

Yeah, and also too rigid. Because that it it slows things down. And particularly we've always had to be flexible in startup land to figure out what's going on and the market changes. But now with AI, the level of flexibility and how fast the market's changing is something none of us have experienced previously. And if you start to solidify and codify rules and ways of working that are completely irrelevant in a month's time, you have to undo it, you confuse people, you're rolling out change unnecessarily. So I think the light touch and I'm going to come back to a lot of observation and reflection is what's needed right now rather than mindless box ticking.

SPEAKER_00 20:23

I suppose even observation and reflection takes time. It's still like putting time aside to think about it, be aware of it, and not just going, I'll come back to this in three months, six months once they're once they're onboarded and they should do their job, job in a really great manner.

SPEAKER_01 20:37

Aaron Powell For me, shower time. So I get all of my thinking then. So and so those are when those moments and the dots come together and I'm like, oh, that that didn't work well. The other thing that's happened a lot in as I've matured uh later in my career is I've become way more trusting of my gut and my sensation and the sensation of things and intuition. Early in my career, I actually used to brand myself as the person that helped founders move away from intuition and to like facts and data-driven decisions. And now I've come full circle and I'm way more about trusting my gut, following the intuition, that inkling that something's not right, and being so much more open to my own physical sensations and then following that. And that plays out way better. And I don't know if that's some of it's just a function of experience because you don't have those inklings without having the experience that then reminds you.

SPEAKER_00 21:35

Yeah. I I wonder also you need to be a bit late in your career to have enough experience within to be able to trust your intuition fully. Like I wondered earlier, there is more emotion, there's more reaction as opposed to intuition. I think I think there's a difference.

SPEAKER_01 21:50

Definitely. Because it's not reaction. It's not vibrant. It's a I'm here because I feel it here. It's like a inkling. It's a Subtlety and it's like, oh no, let me go with where that takes me.

SPEAKER_03 22:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 22:04

And quite often that will be where deciding on a leader comes out of.

SPEAKER_00 22:09

But it's quite hard, I think, for founders when they're so in the moment and they're busy and they're in a rush and thing to actually pay attention to that inkling sometime because it's like I don't really have time to fully explore what that feeling is. I almost don't want to in some ways, because that might put a problem on my plate that I don't want to have to fix.

SPEAKER_01 22:25

Yes, and uh it's been the biggest unlock of my life. Um, and it took me a very long time. So I ended up in between New Voice Media and Peak, with my mother dying. I got massively into yoga and then discovered a teacher and one class. And I was just like, it was called Hatha Yoga, but it was unlike any yoga I'd ever experienced in my life. And I was just like, what is this? This is amazing. And she ended up working with her one-on-one for five years. And we both left yoga during that period. And I did a lot of time unlearning everything I learned from yoga and learning to trust my body, trust my intuition and my sense. And it's now like a superpower. I'm so much calmer. I still will have the occasional temper tantrum, but they're much, much rarer. And I can just have an early warning system in my body. And either if the anger's coming, the big toe goes, I'm like, okay, let me breathe through this. Or when I was really leading a sales team and they really upset me, I'm like, I feel that anger, and they're gonna feel that anger. But I did it because I wanted to wake them up and freak them out. So I used it on purpose rather than it being um against me. And so by developing it, I'm so much less reactive and so much more purposeful in the decisions that I make and the way that I lead my life. And it's not just it's interesting because like they're too, you know, I'm too busy, I can't be bothered. That's just the pushing it all down until something erupts and being afraid of the pain, but it pain is never going to go away. Then you're just giving yourself pain around pain. And so taking the time and being brave and walking through the fire to the other side releases so much. And then you can make better decisions and lead a more purposeful life. So I don't give anybody permission to say, oh no, it's too hard. I'm just gonna do it some other time. I mean, maybe there's um too much going on in your life and you can't face it, but let that seed be planted and work its way through. And when you're ready, go for it because the rewards are amazing.

SPEAKER_00 24:43

So I'm sitting really on that. How if for founders listening, I mean, is is if you use yoga to enter it. Yeah, accidentally, but yeah. And yoga and showering. What's what what would you recommend for other founders and to create that space or to create that insight or to start walking down that path?

SPEAKER_01 25:03

It can be so many things. Um dance is another, like something that's physical, dance is another one. Um, I know martial arts can really do the same. And also, so my therapist, former yoga teacher, and she actually does embodied therapy and somatic therapy. So it's that's where she's decided to go into. She always talks about there being different channels, and one channel will be more active at one point of your life than another. And so that can be talking, it can be writing, it can be movement, it can be spirituality. And it's so some of it is just to be aware of which channel is the most active at the moment and go for that channel. And then also be aware when that channel is no longer active and a new channel has come up. And so if as we're talking and you're going, oh, that sounds interesting, I'd like to like do something with my body, go and explore different movements and see which one catches your interest, your urge, and go that way. If you're thinking, no, that's horrible, but wow, talking sounds amazing, go and follow that channel or writing or spirituality, whatever it is.

SPEAKER_00 26:14

So actually that you could it sounds quite a lot of that, but just awareness, just like getting in touch with your body, getting in touch with something else. That the the route to that, I mean, so it couldn't be running, could be martial, whatever, just create time and space for you to just get back in touch.

SPEAKER_01 26:31

Yeah, it is awareness. And and so I guess if I if I reflect on my journey, I did five years of talking therapy, psychotherapy with somebody, or did meditation through that. So I did headspace for a couple of years. I don't meditate anymore because I don't really feel like I need to. Um and what I also really did not like how dogmatic meditation was and how there's so many rules. So this is another thing is I think to be get to get started, you really care about rules because you want to make sure you do it right. And then the more you do something, the more you realize, well, that's somebody else's rules. And actually how it works for me is completely different. And so I'm a real contrarian. And if you give me a rule, I I don't know if I can swear on this one, but you can just imagine, you know, I'm just like fuck you and your rules. I'm not gonna do that. But I also understand that you need rules to begin with, but you need to give yourself permission when you can step away from those rules. And so for me, for meditation, I don't care if I'm sitting upright, I don't care if I'm completely still. I, you know, it's just taking a breath and just accepting that breath. Whether I'm laying down or I'm on the tube or my eyes are open or my eyes are closed, that's what I've taken away from meditation. And just stop holding yourself to all of these arbitrary rules because it worked for somebody else.

SPEAKER_00 27:52

It sort of weirdly links back to that idea of scaffolding for people. It's kind of like if you feel you put lots of scaffolding around people, that's a warning sign. Actually, it's kind of like even for yourself, if you need to put lots of scaffolding around it.

SPEAKER_01 28:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:02

That's probably a warning sign as well.

SPEAKER_01 28:04

Yeah. But also I like I understand in the beginning you need it. And I think that's also why, you know, religion is very popular and people like to follow rules and it feels like you're doing the right thing. But then if you look at the Christian mystics or any of the mystics, they've transcended those rules. They've discovered their own way of living. And then they ironically create rules that other people follow to then live their own way.

SPEAKER_00 28:28

Well, I suppose done right. It's almost like you're just dangling down a ladder to give people a sort of route into something. It's helpful rather than just like it's like with your team, giving them a completely blank sheet of paper going, have freedom is kind of terrifying, actually limiting. Yeah. Like structured freedom is is much better. Over time, you can sort of increase the freedom. Yeah. I suppose it's like that first getting to anything. Yeah. I went to a thing once, talked to a monk there talking about how um mindfulness was like so like your mind's a grasping animal. And just that image stayed with me so well. It's like you're not trying to get like a calm, blank thing. It's just like to controlling what your brain is grabbing onto. Even just that one sentence helped me so much.

SPEAKER_01 29:11

It also used to feel like with meditation I was failing because I was thinking about things and I wasn't in this blank state. It was like, unless you're deeply asleep or dead, I don't know if you're never really in a blank state. And it for me, it was the um headspace image of a wild horse that gets pulled in and pulled in until it's tame. And that was the image that helped me understand that taming so I can concentrate on one thing. And if my attention moves to something else, I notice that my attention is moved and then I bring it back or I move it to that. But it's the it's almost like there's two of you, and being aware of both of you is what you get.

SPEAKER_00 29:52

So much is why I feel that sort of mobile phones are so dangerous because they almost like start destroying your mind's ability to be mindful. It's kind of you become so responsive or short attention span. It's it's almost the opposite. It's almost like it's like de deprogramming your brain, or I'm not sure that's the right phrase, but like it makes your brain less effective.

SPEAKER_01 30:12

Yeah. Although it just seems to be endemic, like mobile phone and everything else. If you've ever tried to watch a movie from the 80s now, they're so slow. The pace is painful. It's amazing. We watched Good Morning Vietnam with the kids recently, and I remember it just being absolutely amazing. And about, I don't know, 85, 90 minutes in, I was asleep and the kids had just wandered off. Never to return. So even with all of this, there's still just our sense of stimulation is heightened. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 30:48

So we've sort of bring it up.

SPEAKER_01 30:49

We've gone everywhere, haven't we?

unknown 30:51

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 30:52

So we bring it back to like, what's one thing that you think found if the founders are thinking about an operator, bring an operator into their business, and rightly or wrongly going, this this next stage is not for me. I need someone into like a professional CEO and to do this next stage. What's like what's the one thing that you would suggest they do, like right now off listening to the podcast?

SPEAKER_01 31:13

What's interesting because I think depending on that CEO and whether or not they are the visionary and they are the company, and no matter what, you know, and they are in the company is critical to its existence. I would suggest bringing in a strong COO rather than CEO if they know that they are done, don't want to do it anymore, have their new idea ready to completely move away from the business. Then I would bring a CEO in.

SPEAKER_00 31:42

That's nice.

SPEAKER_01 31:43

But I think you need to figure that part out first. And I think you need to go on a holiday to figure that part out. Rather than making, you know, you need and not just a week's holiday, like a month off out of the business to really reflect on what is your driver, what do you want? And then decide is it a COO or a CEO.

SPEAKER_00 32:06

Yeah. I think that's really nice.

unknown 32:08

Sure.

SPEAKER_00 32:09

I think founders do it at the stage when they're when they're often when you're thinking about these things as a founder, you are quite, if you're not burnt out, you are often on the way that because your current route is not working. So that's frustration with like you're behind your targets, you've you've lent in, you've put the hours in, you're like, oh, I'm not even sure I can do this anymore. That's not a great place for making a decision from.

SPEAKER_01 32:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:30

And actually, I found with clients like you you can bring them back if you can like simplify their vision, if you can reconnect them to their mission and their business, if you can get them in back in control, get them to see it's their team. They some of you don't even need anyone, it's actually just changing, or might you change the management team generally, but just re-rechanging how you're doing it is possible. I think I think more change is possible, founders, than they believe. There's this narrative we're trying to tell ourselves of, oh, I'm I'm the startup person, I'm not the scale-up person. And that's kind of a comforting narrative sometime, but it's not always true.

SPEAKER_01 33:02

Yeah. Uh quite often it's not. I mean, I guess we think about the ones who are the stars of the founder CEOs. Yeah. So I think work with a coach, take proper time out, restore, and really reflect on I wake up tomorrow and I'm not part of this business. How do I feel?

SPEAKER_00 33:22

Yeah. It's an opportunity to almost treat like a new startup. Yeah. Sometimes it finds a lot like if you started a business a day and you have the clients you have, you had the experience you have, you have the team that you have, I think you'd actually be quite excited by that.

SPEAKER_01 33:34

Yeah. But that's also where you need to go and get some energy back.

SPEAKER_00 33:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 33:38

And disconnect so that you can start again. And I know everybody's like, oh, I can't possibly do that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But if you were diagnosed with cancer or something horrible happened and you were out of your business for a month, your business would survive. Yeah. And you just have to think of it that way. And and also another thing that I've really realized is we're so easy as humans to attach onto things and give a huge amount of meaning to whatever it is. So it could be your, I mean, for founders, it's going to be your company. Um and you forget that actually it's really easy for you to attach meaning to something else as soon as you go and start a new thing. And so part of having a proper break is to decide, I am still attached and this is my life. Or actually, no, I'm just done.

SPEAKER_03 34:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:30

And this thing over here is where I want to attach. But you have to give yourself enough of a break to detach so you can figure out where you want to put your meaning.

SPEAKER_00 34:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 34:40

And so then I have advice on either one, like what to look for in a CEO and what to look for in a COO.

SPEAKER_00 34:47

Perfect. Let's go with both.

SPEAKER_01 34:48

Okay. So COO is the one that I'm much more comfortable with, given my background and uh the number of COOs that I speak with. And that is basically dating. You have to spend a lot of time with that person. I wouldn't hire them immediately. I'd bring them on as a contractor, but I would have a lot of dinners with them. I would go through a dating process because you are absolute partners together and you need to have complementary skills with enough overlap that you understand each other. And if you have too much overlap, what's the point? And you don't have any overlap, you're not going to work together. One of the things that I did, I mean, this wasn't in the hiring process, but just as just how we worked together with the CEO at Peak is, and it's actually how I do it with my husband as well, is we listed all of the things that we hate doing, each of us individually. And then we looked at our lists, and then we picked off the things that don't mind doing from the other person's list. And there was actually a surprising amount that was able to switch both in both relationships. And so I would suggest doing that as part of the hiring process because it also gets you to understand their strengths and weaknesses and where their passion lies and what gives them energy and also what gives you energy. And so if you can switch your shit lists enough, you know that they're the right person.

SPEAKER_00 36:12

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:12

Given that you don't hate them and you know, you have the right the the really shared values matter so much in that role because you're giving somebody, assuming that you're the external visionary CEO, you're giving somebody carte blanche to run the internal business for you. So it needs to be that they're gonna run the business that you envision the business to be.

SPEAKER_00 36:35

And then for the CEO?

SPEAKER_01 36:36

For the CEO, this is where I think it's much more important for you to figure out that you're actually gonna detach. So if your idea is to become the special projects person or the executive chair, then you're hiring a COO anyhow.

SPEAKER_00 36:52

Yeah, just a very frustrated CEO.

SPEAKER_01 36:55

Yeah. Who should be a COO. Yeah. Because you're not letting go of the business. So then if you actually are letting go and you're going to leave the business, I don't know how involved you should be because you're not going to work with this person. You want to make sure that they're going to make you money and that all of the time and you've put in is going to contribute. But if you're trusting your board and your board and you trust that your board are making the right decisions for the business, other than being a salesperson in the process, I don't actually think you should have a huge say.

SPEAKER_00 37:27

Yeah, I agree with that. I really like that. I think that's such a good insight to end with. Like just be honest with yourself, what you actually want. Like how how willing are you to detach? And if you're not, don't, don't hire COR in disguise. And regardless, I like this idea of the shit list as well. I think it's brilliant. Like I can see how I'm done explicitly with my wife, but we've definitely there's definitely a nice mix of like things we both hate that the other person's perfectly happy to do.

SPEAKER_01 37:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 37:54

Um well, Beth, thank you so much for coming on today. That's been awesome. Awesome.

SPEAKER_01 37:58

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_00 37:59

Thanks for having me. Such a good episode today with Beth. I love the insight around how willing are you to let go as a founder. Remember, we'll see you next week for another episode with Freddie on a Monday with a post bag or Wednesday for a founder episode. If any questions, just reach out at hello at peer hyphen effect.com. In the meantime, thanks for listening and happy scaling.