Mindy: What if the reason you’re not reaching financial independence has nothing to do with how much you earn, but everything to do with how you think? Today, Scott is breaking down his CEO toolkit. Yes, it was originally aimed at people who eventually want to become a leader, but there are tactics every and anyone can take away to become better employees.
Mindy: Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. My name is Mindy Jensen. With me as always is my used to be a CEO co-host Scott Trench.
Scott: Thanks, Mindy. Great to be here. And I just love the executive function that you bring to every single one of these podcasts here every day. So, um, yeah, as as you said, Mindy, I was a CEO, and so I, I was trained to think like a CEO. It was, there was a little bit, there’s some, there’s some instinctive, um, I like to think there’s some, uh, base baseline passion for Bigger Pockets, for the world that, you know, of personal finance and financial independence that came in, and some some skills I brought to bear on that. But the toolkit of becoming a CEO was trained in me by my former boss, if I by by many many mentors, but primarily by a former boss who I’d like to give a shout out here too, his name is Mike Zawalski and Mike was has been a CEO or operating chairman, a a CEO coach or boss, um, for for many, many years across many different experiences. And I was very fortunate to get a chance to be mentored personally by him for five years. And um one of the things he told me to do early on in my career was build my CEO toolkit, the playbook I use, the frameworks I use that I can apply to many situations. And so I thought I’d share that today, heavily inspired by the things he taught me and say that this is something that I think many more people should do over the course of their careers. This is a hard one toolkit, right? It takes many years to really define and and and and and build artifacts, the S- types of spreadsheets or presentations or those types of things that you use. The the, the, the decision- making processes you bring for hiring someone, firing someone, managing for developing a strategy or a plan of some kind in your or in your organization. What what what makes something good or bad? And being able to apply that to unknown situations is super valuable. You will need this if you ever want to lead a product and technology function. If you ever want to lead a finance function, if you want to lead an operations function, if you ever want to lead a P&L unit, if you ever want to lead a legal or HR function, you will need some version of this, whatever you call it. And I thought I would show what I’ve built um here today because I I’m passionate about it. The other the other thing is now that it’s been a year since, you know, almost a year since I stepped down, I don’t want the skill set to atrophy too much without me being able to review it if, uh, if I ever want to draw from it again in the future.
Mindy: And you’re just giving it away for free here, a bigger pocket’s money.
Scott: Copying it is very difficult, right? The framework, you you will have to build your own, right? And another thing that comes in with the with the toolkit is your opinion should be brought to bear on this, right? I make decisions in my playbook, right? What one thing, you know, I’ll talk to somebody from an HR department and they’ll say, you should never tie the compensation adjustment to the performance review. And I say, no. The compensation adjustment is directly tied to the to the performance review. And there’s a direct chain from how what I what we said we’re going to do this year, how you did, and my assessment of of of your contributions to the compensation change to get. And some people say it’s a a bad practice, other people say it’s a great practice. I have chosen in my toolkit. And that’s one example for example that I think I think we’ll come in from this. And and and people will and should deviate from from, uh, from each of these items if they were a CEO, and people will will have to build their own as as that reflects their style as an executive or a leader, um, of any capacity in any any organization they run.
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Scott: I’m skeptical of a lot of financial products, but life insurance isn’t one of them, at least not term life. For the vast majority of you listening, term life is simply the right answer, and the smartest way to buy it isn’t one big policy, it’s a ladder. Your need for coverage isn’t flat, it declines over time. You’ve got a 30-year mortgage, a couple of young kids, maybe a spouse, mid-career. In 15 years, the mortgage is going to be smaller and the kids are almost launched. So instead of buying one giant 30-year policy you’ll overpay for it, you stack a few, say a 10- year, a 20- year, and a 30- year layer. So your total coverage steps down as your actual obligations step down. You only pay for what you actually need when you need it. Ethos is a platform that helps you find life insurance 100% online. You can get a quote in seconds and apply in minutes. There’s no medical exam, you just answer a few health questions online. You can get up to 3 million in coverage. Some policies are as low as $30 a month. That makes building a ladder genuinely fast. Get your free quote at ethos.com/bpmoney. That’s ethos.com/bpmoney. Application times may vary and rates may vary.
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Mindy: The first, I’ve never been a CEO and I won’t ever be a CEO, and I’m totally fine with that. But I think there’s a lot of people who will listen to this and be like, well, I can’t apply all of it to my day-to-day life, but I can definitely pick out some some doozies that are really going to catapult me up the the food chain at work. So, I appreciate you doing this for our listeners Scott, and section number one you have titled foundational artifacts. And one of the very first thing is delegation of authority. I really really like that you are already thinking about delegating your authority on, uh, page one, day one of your job as a CEO. Talk to me about this.
Scott: each of the people that I worked for over the years, in various versions, this was a non issue. Who makes what decisions. But codifying it in a document that says, oh, this person decides whether or not to sell the company. This person chooses the auditing firm. This person sets the board meeting cadence. This person approves the annual budget. This person makes the annual budget. This person makes hiring or firing decisions or raise or promotion decisions up to this threshold beyond which this person makes it. There’s a very detailed set of decision making that um that goes that, you know, the decision-making authority that is relative to the size and scale of a business and just putting that down on paper and going over it and aligning with it with my boss, the board, for example, removes a problem. We actually built this and then never referred to it again, effectively. And it, that’s why it’s, that’s why it’s powerful as a day one artifact, right? But if it didn’t exist, there would be that confusion. But because we knew it, every once in a while I go and reference it and there wouldn’t be an issue, right? I would just know, oh, this one requires approval from this person, this one does not, we can move forward, right? And so, you know, over time this trust is built, that’s not a an issue, but that’s like a core day one artifact. There’s probably a version of that that could make many people’s lives easier that are working right now if it was actually addressed, right? So that’s that’s one. The second component um, um, here is is compensation philosophy, right? There’s a, how are we going to pay the people that work for us. It’s a very fundamental item here. And there’s, there’s right ways to do it. At an organization that I run, like, like a, like a bigger pockets, I’m looking for different bands for different skill sets, right? Somebody I’m expecting a a, uh, a fairly administrative role from, I might pay at the 50th percentile and expect a 40-hour full-time effort and that’s it. And we’re going to, we’re going to treat them fairly and give them opportunities to grow and those kinds of things, but that’s what we’re going to go. We’re going to hire at the 50th percentile for that. An executive I might want to pay at the 65th or 75th percentile and expect much more. Like we’re not we’re not going to work, this is not a 40-hour week job. This is a 50 or 60 hour week job. We’re going to expect you to bring much more, we’re going to expect you to to to bring a a a uh, a more experience or, you know, a proven track record into that position. and defining that across these roles, I think is really important, right? And like I said, not everyone will agree with with with that, right? Different, different organizations, people will react strongly. No, this is how it should be. Everyone should be paid at the 99th. Everyone should be paid a this this level. You know, we should outsource to a different a foreign country and go much much lower cost. No, this is how I bias the organization, um, an organization that I run in most cases or that I believe I would run in most cases, um, with a compensation philosophy. And then the third foundational artifact is a definition of strategy. Strategy kills organizations because it’s misused. It’s talked about. It’s like this wishy-washy word that uh, can can reflect the the the paygrade of the person making a decision or the size of a decision, but that’s not what strategy is. Strategy is fundamentally about the hard choices of concentrating on a few focused objectives that coherently work together to produce an outcome, right? It diagnoses, it comprehends what’s going on in this company’s market. It provides a guiding policy. like Costco has a great strategy, right? Um, they they’re their guiding policies is very clear. We’re not going to have a fancy smancy store. We’re going to have an open warehouse. We’re not going to sell offer a large selection. We’re going to offer a limited selection. We’re not going to allow you, we’re not going to cover the last mile. We’re going to only allow purchases in bulk. We’re not going to have premium, uh, necessarily artifacts. We’re going to have high quality, but we’re going to compete with the providers in in in areas where we think the costs are not low enough because our our goal is to drive good quality products at a low price. Like that’s a great guiding policy and it defines what they don’t do, right? IKEA has a very similar, similar, very strong strategy. And then there’s a set, and then strategy is fundamentally about action as well, right? A strategy is useless if it cannot be realistically achieved by the organization uh in there. And so a diagnosis, a guiding policy and a set of coherent actions. This is straight from good strategy, bad strategy by Richard Rumelt, one of the first books I recommend people read if they ever want to lead, um, or in general if you want to study business books, you should add to the top of your list because it defines this term and as you train your brain to think in strategy and and dismiss what people are calling strategy falsely and recognize it when even when it’s not you know uh when when a when a real strategy comes to you that’s not bound in that term, that’s super powerful. So those are the first three things because I don’t want to be talking about strategy if it’s not meeting this definition, because then it’s not strategy. It’s just something that sounds important um or is there is is a you know, a large a large scale decision but it’s not actually what the organization fundamentally needs to do to win. So those are the three kind of day one, day one pieces that come in to the organization.
Mindy: Okay, let’s talk about strategic planning next.
Scott: Strategic planning is a hypothesis, right? So it’s a guess. And I believe that almost everyone that comes into an organization, myself included needs to come in with that guess, right? A lot of people like to wait 90 or 100 days to diagnose. And that’s not how I that’s not how I’m going to do it, right? We’re we’re not going to do that, we’re going to act much more quickly and get to hypotheses much more quickly and test them much more quickly. So a strategic plan is a 12 to 20 page document. It’s not overwhelming, it’s not hundreds of pages of detail. It is a simple thought process on how to win in a given industry. a strategic plan is a document that that follows that procedure. It diagnoses what the problem is in the organization, what it appears to me the problem is an an organization. It provides a set of guiding policies that would begin to take advantage of the company’s strengths, competitive weaknesses or whatever, um, else there is there. and then there’s a set of actions that can be undertaken almost immediately that can begin moving towards that strategy or that strategic diagnosis and set of guiding policies. And my bias as a as a CEO is to come in and immediately begin moving towards that direction. I will bring that strategic plan in place. I might spend 30 or 60 days modifying it based on impact from stakeholders around the company or executives or those types of things, but I have that bias to act instant almost instantly in most situations, and that makes me a bad fit as a CEO potential candidate for some organizations and potentially a great fit for places like what Bigger Pockets was, right? Where we need to where we can there are low stakes to trying things, moving quickly through them and moving on to the next opportunity. and that quick decision- making is much more important. I might be a bad fit for someone like a SpaceX, right? Like a like a, like a where you got to launch a rocket and if you don’t get that right, there’s a really big problem um downstream. It’s a one one shot at at success there. So that those are kind of the the the the that’s that’s that’s one of the first things that I would basically say, I’m going to come in, I’m going to come into the interview process or the before I accept the job, I’m going to present that and get alignment from the Board of Directors and and maybe some of the executive team and say, here’s my initial hypothesis. It may change in you know after we conduct our process or strategic planning process, which is a several month detailed initiative to refine and test those that those assumptions. that’s we’ll map out the customer journey, pain points, monetization opportunities and competitive analysis. But that’s where I’m going to start with. and this is the bias I come in with and I believe you must come in with bias in order to do good strategic strategic planning. Um if you can’t, you’re going to be way behind the rest the rest of the bell curve. You’re probably not a good candidate for that particular job or role if you do not have a strong bias from day one.
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Scott: If you’ve been putting off life insurance, I get it. The old process was miserable. Phone calls with an agent, a nurse coming to your house for a blood draw, then waiting weeks to find out what you’d pay for. That friction is exactly why so many people who should have coverage don’t. Here’s what I believe. Most BP Money listeners need term life and the right move is to build a ladder. A few term policies of different lengths stacked together to your coverage steps down as your mortgage shrinks and your kids get closer to being financially independent or you get closer to hitting your financial independence number. The thing that makes that practical now is Ethos, a platform that helps you find life insurance all 100% online, same-day coverage, no medical exam. You just answer a few health questions online. Up to $3 million in coverage, some policies as low as $30 a month. So building a two or three-layer ladder that used to take a month of appointments is something you can knock out before your coffee gets cold. Get your free quote at ethos.com/bpmoney. That is ethos.com/bpmoney. Application times may vary and rates may vary.
Scott: If you’ve been putting off life insurance, I get it. The old process was miserable. Phone calls with an agent, a nurse coming to your house for a blood draw, then waiting weeks to find out what you’d pay for. That friction is exactly why so many people who should have coverage don’t. Here’s what I believe. Most BP Money listeners need term life and the right move is to build a ladder. A few term policies of different lengths stacked together to your coverage steps down as your mortgage shrinks and your kids get closer to being financially independent or you get closer to hitting your financial independence number. The thing that makes that practical now is Ethos, a platform that helps you find life insurance all 100% online, same-day coverage, no medical exam. You just answer a few health questions online. Up to $3 million in coverage, some policies as low as $30 a month. So building a two or three-layer ladder that used to take a month of appointments is something you can knock out before your coffee gets cold. Get your free quote at ethos.com/bpmoney. That is e o s.com/bpmoney. Application times may vary and rates may vary.
Mindy: Next up is financial fluency, and this feels like a no- brainer, but I like your explanation. Please explain what financial fluency is in regards to the CEO toolkit.
Scott: There’s a couple of truths about business in terms of building a valuable business that is um that I think are are really important. So first there’s revenue quality, right? So someone selling a lifetime membership, for example, has a terrible business from a revenue valuation perspective. This is not a business that can be sold one day. You’ve collected the cash up front and you must service it forever. right? That that’s a that’s a that’s a terrible business, right? a one-time service is also relatively low value, right? a recurring service is more valuable. A product that is sold one off is not very is not is more valuable than a one-time service potentially, but not as valuable as a recurring product, like a subscription. So predictable recurring revenue, customers that come back over and over and over again, are what build the foundation for a business that can actually sustain paying employees over long periods of time, that can actually, you know, uh uh predictably grow and that that um that can be borrowed again, it creates revenue streams that can be borrowed against. That’s a much more valuable business. So, revenue quality is a is a core consideration. if there’s opportunities to solve problems in ways that produce predictable recurring revenue at the same rate as other um you know, one-time services or one-time products, that’s a much more valuable business, right? Next up is unit economics, right? So, when we sell a book, right? There are costs that go into selling a book, right? Somebody’s got to market the book. Somebody, you know, before we even get to that, when we sell a book, we got to print the book, we got to ship the book, right? Some those are those are those are hard cost. There has to be a price that the book sells at above the cost the the those hard costs to make to to even have it be bothered, you know, be be worthwhile to print and ship. There are also unit economics that come with a book launch, right? Somebody’s got to write the book, somebody’s got to edit the book, somebody’s got to record the audio book, those types of things. And so we have to build maps for each of these types of products that says, how profitable is a book launch and how profitable is each incremental book, and make sure that we’re building a business that actually can generate profits in there because if profits can’t be sustained, then you cannot continue solving the core customer problem. Cash conversion is another one here. Um businesses can have a lot of revenue, but not generate a lot of cash. I’ll use real estate as an example for our proxy for this, right? So if I have a rental property and I have to and I and I get $50,000 in net operating income, right? Because I got $75,000 in rent and I had $25,000 in expenses. That’s $50,000 in net operating income. But if I had to replace the roof that year, that’s, I only get 25,000. So it says my EbiDA, my my my uh my net operating income or my EbiDA earnings before interest taxes depreciation and amortization, are 50,000, but I’m really only making $25,000. That’s a problem, especially if next year I got to do a foundation repair, and the year after that I got to redo the siting, right? That can kill you. And that’s very common problem in businesses that that show EbiDA, earnings before interest taxes depreciation and amortization, without actually tracking that through to cash conversion downstream. There’s a lot of ways that you can be fooled by profitability um that doesn’t actually translate to cash flow. So these are basic financial fluency um items here. And then there’s capital allocation, right? You know, uh if if if the business generates profits, I’ve got choices about what to do with that. I can fund more growth. I can hire people or you know, attempt to build more things. We can buy companies, we can pay down debt, we can distribute the cash to shareholders, or we can buy back shares from shareholders, right? Um those are all valid uses of cash. and how that that cash is used has an enormous impact, almost as much impact on return profiles for the business as the actual growth and cash flow initiatives for there.
Mindy: Is this something that you need to know on day one of being a CEO?
Scott: No, you don’t need to know this as on day one as a CEO. You don’t need to know, you don’t need to have a complete toolkit when you take the job for an executive position here, but you got to have components of the toolkit in place, right? This is what I’ve developed at the end of being a CEO. No way could I have talked like this when I took the job in 2018, right? as as a as a as a 28-year-old. This was trained for me and and learned across, this was part coaching for my boss, part things that I learned and discovered for myself, and part the the aggregation of the best ideas from books and resources that I’ve read over those those years. That’s what a good toolkit looks like, and it will ever this will this will change and and evolve and grow as I learn things or get persuaded to move off of the positions that I currently hold in this. But that’s what I think like think about if you’re going into an interview process and you’re able to talk through some of these things, you have a much higher chance of getting the job, I believe if you’re able to go through this kind of this kind of thinking in the context of your divisions, division leadership, right? Like a CFO who’s talking through this stuff is going to pass test one. There’s going to be other tests downstream, but this is this is a core test that I would want to look for in financial fluency for a CFO. If they can’t talk like this or or cover most of these topic these topics missing one or two, that’s a problem. They’re not they’re not ready for that job.
Mindy: Yeah, I think this is a great set of documents and information for somebody who is looking for a leadership role to read through this and pick and choose, oh okay, for my specific leadership role, I know that I’m going to need to use these. These are probably not going to be so important, so I don’t need to focus on those right now. I can build up my competency in this level and then go and try and find a new job if that’s their goal. Go and pitch myself to be promoted if that’s their goal. Um, I think this is a great overview of things that that it shows that you’re doing the work and you’re doing more work than a lot of the people that you’re up against.
Scott: You don’t have to master all these things. You shouldn’t, you won’t have these things mastered by the first time you take a role. But if you have a hypothesis that you can refine, you can refine that, right? You can bring this to somebody and they can tell you, no, I don’t like that. I was on a call once learning from other CEOs, like a some kind of mastermind. And the question was, what happens when an executive leaves? Right? And and the CEO’s response was this. He said, when the executive is terminated for performance, I I always conduct an external search to replace them. When the executive is leaving because they’re be, you know, it’s it’s a retirement, it’s been a very long run, they’ve got a great opportunity, some sort of positive departure signal, we almost always promote from within. How the heck do you come into a conversation with that framework, right? Without having that as a nugget in there? And then, you know, of course, you’re going to disagree with that or whatever, not think through that in your current position, but when you’re at that, when I was at that moment in time, at that point in my career, that advice was like, oh, I’m ready for that advice. I’m ready for that as a bias, as a strong, strong bias in that type of situation.
Mindy: That is brilliant. That is a great tip and not something that I would ever think of, but I can totally see how that is the path that you absolutely should take. Rotten apples spoils a whole bunch. Maybe maybe not, but you don’t want to chance that when you’re firing somebody for performance, go outside, get somebody else.
Scott: There’s going to be exceptions to that as a as a rule but but but that like that instantly clicked as like, yeah, that’s likely to happen. And and and I don’t know if that’s if that’s the right call for somebody who’s learning to be the next CEO or whatever in there, but I think you should definitely if you work at a division and you know that your boss has been terminated for bad performance, that somebody external is coming in, and that’s going to shake things up. That could be very good or that could be very bad. It’s probably going to be a consequence for people who are not willing to change to whatever the new executive comes in with. So you are almost certainly likely to be very much at risk if you are not Johnny on the spot and ready to adapt, and that could be a career changing opportunity for you if you are. But that that’s the kind of thing that that comes in there because, you know, a a a CEO who comes in and judges your your executive leader not right is going to hire almost certainly an external candidate if they’re good, um as a as a strong bias in a high percentage of the time and that that is going to create change that is going to come in, right? And so this hopefully these hopefully this playbook is helpful to people that are listening not just because they can build their their own versions of it over time but because it’ll tell you how CEOs and and and private equity thinks to some degree in terms of how to run a business.
Mindy: Well, let’s talk about running a business. Let’s talk about governance and cadence. That’s up next in the toolkit.
Scott: Sure. So so there’s kind of two cadences that are central to running a business. One is the the cadence with my bosses, the board, and the other is with the the the constituents, the the employees at the company who work at the company, right? So these are these in my view should be mirrors, right? I I’ve I try to run what I believe to be as as transparent an organization as possible. I literally tell every new employee the strategy in the early days, one-on-one if I can if a small company or in batches, if it gets a little larger in there. And we walk through, here’s the strategy. Here’s how we define strategy. Here’s what what we’re trying to do and what we think we’re going to do. Here’s our results so far. Here’s what the the current uh work in progress is. Here’s where you fit in in there, right? So that’s kind of how we think about it. But from a cadence level, you’ll see two mirrors here, right? One is we have a weekly or semi-weekly 90-minute one-on-one with my board chair, right? And I’ll go over and accept the agenda and say, here’s what I’m working on right now. Here are my problems, here’s the thing I’m struggling with, here’s what here’s some wins um on this. Here’s some updates on the thing you asked about last week. The second is going to be a weekly KPI package and a 13-week rolling cash flow forecast. So this says, here are the core, you know, 20-ish KPIs that we’re looking at, maybe a few builders buildups to those. Here’s the activities that we’ve promised that we’re that we’re doing human activities that we’re doing at the organization to drive those numbers. And then here’s a forecast for cash flow, um so that we can we we don’t run into any surprises there, um, or have any any any timing issues that you’re going to worry about. And as you do that, over and over and over again and revise it every single week, you know, the first few weeks you could be very bad at predicting cash flow, but by, you know, week 13, you’re you’re getting much better, right? You know, year two, you’re not, you’re not having massive surprises on there, unless there’s structural changes in the business. Then there’s a monthly financial reporting package and and and call to go over that. Here’s what we said we were, here’s what we thought we were going to be at the end of the, you know, here’s what budgeted for at the beginning of the year. Here’s where we we thought we would be at the end of last month and here’s what we actually came up and here’s what the changes were. Then there’s a monthly operating review, which is where I bring an executive, one of the executives on a rotation to present a divisional update to the board um in there. That’s useful for two reasons. One, it gets the executive a chance to talk to the board, and two, it gets the board a chance to assess each executive. And if there’s a problem developing and they’re we’re trying to coach somebody through it, we can kind of tell whether they’re they’re accepting the coaching and feedback and making the changes needed, or whether there’s a bigger problem brewing. So there’s not an event where I’m surprising the board with I got to make a change here, um at this particular level. Then there’s the quarterly board meeting which is a a process I drive and push through and say, here’s what the biggest issues of the company are. We’re going to structure it. I try to spend a disproportionate amount of time. I don’t spend an hour on each division. I spend 90 minutes or two hours on the biggest issue, then you know, 30 to 45 minute chunks in the next two and then an update on the on the remaining bits. Finance is at the end. And then there’s an annual business plan and review which is similar to a board meeting but it kind of says, here’s, you know, we we go we go through a process there that says, here’s where we want the shape of the P&L to look next year, kind of like revenueish here, profits here. Then we go to each that’s a top down, right? kind of here’s the here’s what we’re thinking. We’re we’re okay with this kind of range-ish. Great. Now we go to the executive team and we say, what do you, what are you going to, what do you need to do to make these happen? And they say, oh, we need more more money and we need more, you know, lower targets. Okay, and we have a negotiation back and forth over time and align on this one-on-one and and as a group and we present that to the board. So that’s the board level cadence and I do almost the exact same thing with the company. I have a weekly or semi-weekly one-on-one with each of my executive team reports. I have a quarterly check-in against our scorecard goals and planning process that builds directly into the board decks. I have year-end compensation reviews um and performance reviews. There’s a weekly metrics review that all company team members are invited to and that just spits right out to the board. I don’t show the 13 week rolling cash flow forecast, unless there’s a reason to with the the the employee base in there because that can be held inside the finance team. But the KPI check-in is the exact mirror usually of what we sent to the board. There’s a senior leadership team meeting for 90 minutes, monthly internal operating reviews. So that executive, when this is working well, will have their team, their directors present their operating review and they’ll use those slides and give them credit in the board room up the chain. We’ll just literally rip and repeat them. And then there’s the quarterly all hands meeting which is almost always a direct derivative from the board meeting um if I can or I’m stealing as many slides as I can so that the the team is seeing what we’re using at the board level, right? And you can’t always map these perfectly but the more you can, the more you build trust I believe over time. So, and then we have skipped levels with uh direct reports. So this sounds like a lot, but it’s really not. It’s really, you know, about 10, 15 hours a week of cadence, right? That pulse from time to time and it can get really light when we’re not in a board meeting or operating review week. And so my schedule can have 35 unstructured, 30 to 35 unstructured hours in a week with this cadence. And yet I’ve got a very rigorous structure in place and that that that free time is very intentional because then I can focus my attention on a problem for a quarter or so or or until it’s resolved or until the opportunity is realized or two quarters in some cases if I need more time, and then reset and move on to the next thing once that’s in place. So that’s kind of the the cadence item there. Everyone’s got a different cadence. That’s that’s the one I settled on as as as uh my happy place.
Mindy: Well, I like this cadence and I’m remembering back to the Bigger Pockets. I would I had your calendar on my calendar so I could schedule uh podcast recordings and I would see these these meetings all the time. I don’t know if this is a like a no- brainer to anybody else. I wasn’t in any of these meetings. But knowing that I, if I was going to be in these meetings, knowing that I had to be there every week and I had to present every week and I had to be present, makes me think more about what I’m doing. If you had these once every other month or, you know, once a quarter, oh crap, how do I do this again? I can’t remember what I’m supposed to be doing. If you are an employee and you want to earn your way into these meetings, start doing some of this stuff that Scott’s talking about. Look at your own little job and give your boss a report every week or month and let them know what it is you’re doing. You’re you’re showing that you’re willing to do the work, you’re working over and above what’s being asked of you and you want to grow.
Scott: I’ll be really clear. I would change this depending on business context, right? So so like if if I had a very seasonal business, for example, like that like we had that Christmas tree ting business or whatever. Yes. Um that that guy, like this would be silly to do in that context, right? This is a business that’s this is a this was a a media business that had that, right? That Christmas tree business, what I would be doing is I’d be building out a projection of what I thought sales and operations would look like during the season, and I’d be really intentional about following that curve, right? across there. How am I above or below that curve of sales and interest and operations in there that I thought I would be in. Then I would spend a lot of time reviewing it. then probably sit back and work on something strategic or some other other other lines for the other eight, nine months of the year with that. But it’s so it’s mapping this to to the context. That’s really important here. But that but I would certainly put in that rigidity to that that portion of the seasonal business if that was a 100 person business, you know, that that that that that required the the you know, executive oversight to do, not not just a single person. This would be silly for one person Christmas tree lighting business to do. But I’m I’m I’m using that as an example of the seasonality like like there would be differences in this approach if uh if if the sales process was a monthly uh uh uh uh subscription product or something like that. Um or or a tax business for example. But anyways, um I I digress there. Next up is the hiring and performance management process, which is the whole key to this. I think this is the job after setting the strategy and saying, what are we going to do and how do we win? And do I understand the customer? um it’s it’s how do I say, here’s my plan. How do I actually get it to get get it executed? And how do I get the people that I’m hiring to improve upon the plan, right? I should be handing them, I should be handing a draft, a good idea of what I need my the CFO to do, and they should take that spirit and improve upon it, right? If if things are going well. So this is where um this is this became central to our to our process here about what I call the unicorn search, right? So if if I wanted to hire a an elite CFO for an organization, it’s something’s like a really critical position. what I do is I actually invent a a fake person first, right? I say, I say, hmm, if I could like, if I could write down a piece of paper and invent this person, what would their skill set be, right? Well, they would have experience, you know, uh uh a several repetitions at businesses just like ours. Um they would have a, they would be insanely efficient at closing the books and completing the monthly reporting package. There’d be no errors um or or the errors would be so infrequent that they’d be memorable, no uh they’d be memorable uh in the context of this. That’s that’s how that’s how that’s how strong um the the basics are. They’d knock out all those basics right away in the first 90 days. So I don’t have to worry about them. I don’t even think about them. I just hit a report every month and it’s always right and it tells me what’s going on and why. Right? Then, we move on to value added finance. and this person is a strong operational leader. I can I can hand off portions of the divisions that are in trouble or that that that need extra attention to them so I can focus on the next big opportunity and they’re a strong executive presence in the room, very rigid, um, making sure that things are are moving forward there. They’re aligned, they push back and say here’s what I think. I I don’t have to babysit them with the board. They go directly to the board. I don’t I don’t want to go in face to the board about why this line item was a was higher or lower last month. the CFO is going directly to them and I and I trust that relationship because I’m sitting next to them every single day and we’re talking about these things on a regular basis. They have an M&A framework, they’re they’re very rigorous and thorough but also understand what we’re trying to do and are not just conservative cost cutters. They’re aggressive revenue, aggressive about revenue opportunities and growth in there. So I’ll I’ll put that down, right? Those those are those are hard one situations, right? You you are if you’re listening to this are probably thinking about your own boss or your bosses in the past um or people that have worked for you and saying here are the things that they did well and here are the things they I wish they would have done. So invent the the perfect person, right? Then, once we have the invent fictional uh perfect person, I create what’s called a set of first round draft picks. So these are going to be if I could wave a magic wand and poach people from the industry, it would be this person, this person, this person, and this person, this person. They’re they’re actual people, right? And then we go outbound to those people and invite them to apply for the job, right? That’s typically done with an executive recruiter at this level, but you could do this with your HR person. and in fact, Nigel, our old HR guy used to do this for me in certain roles that didn’t weren’t an executive recruiter function. We also do a second round draft picks or whatever in there. and then we’ll post the job because we may miss people um as well and and you know, uh as part of that. So from there, we have our interview process. Nothing special about our interview process necessarily um in there. I don’t you know, this is standard rigorous stuff where have executives talk to people, but the the real uh thing that I think is really important about our interview process or the one I I would bring is is at the end of it, I ask the executive to use my definition of strategy. Diagnosis, guiding principles, specific action, and tell me what they think they need to do in the first 90 days, first year at the company. And that’s a presentation that’s specific and and actionable in there. And what I like it, I redraft my job description or the whatever, offer them the job um with that and that’s what they go to town executing on. So I don’t lose this first 90 days. So common to executive um hires where they go in and and and and play this, you know, I’m going to I’m going to learn and whatever. They’re going to learn too. Like we’re not going to go in and just make a big mess right away. We’re going to come with a clear hypothesis about what to do um in the in the early days, and we’re going to align on that with the executive and the board so that if there’s a hiring plan, that’s part of the job acceptance. If there’s a you know, change or change in road map, you know, that’s going to be part of the hiring process. So that’s a really critical process for me and I’m spending a lot of time on it intentionally because that is such a huge component of the the CEO job in particular, such a huge component of executive function as well. And and again, one last thing on this, a big part of this is knowing what good looks like in this person and I I try to be very prescriptive about this. I have what’s called a scorecard that is alongside the job description that says this person’s mission is to, for example, bring a culture of value added finance to the entire organization. And then it will be very prescriptive about the outputs. Finance 101 is knocked out after 90 days. We don’t talk about it, we don’t worry about it. You’re not coming to me telling me you can’t do important work like M&A or strategic planning because you’re bogged down in closing the books or or building the financial, you know, or building the projection for the next month. You’re knocking that out in a reasonable period of time, 40 hours a month, 25, 30% of your time, and you’re spending the rest on driving the business. and if you’re not up for that, you’re not going to work out here. That’s because that’s in the scorecard before we we we we we hired Jeff on this. And that then is updated every year with the executive and alignment, and I give a performance review based on how much of that we complete or not. So that’s essential. That’s my whole job, I believe is refining is is is deriving these artifacts, these performance management artifacts from a central strategy and making sure that they are more or less executed across the year. And yeah, there’s pivots and changes from time to time, but that’s the that’s the job.
Mindy: Scott, that all sounds like that came out of experience.
Scott: Yeah, I mean it’s opinion, right? Like what you’re getting for me is an opinion about how a business should be run or how I would want to run the business. And not everyone agrees with that opinion, right? So like that’s that’s what’s great. Like Traction or EOS or or four disciplines of execution or you know, other CEOs that are more that are very kind of creative or sales oriented or whatever are going to have different opinions about how to run a business. Um and this is my opinion about how it how it ought to be done. And and that’s that’s what that’s what the toolkit is, right? You bring your opinion to bear on this, right? There’s no there’s no hedging in these areas, right? I’m very prescriptive about it because I find the advantages of that and of of a strong hypothesis and a bias for action to far outweigh the very real consequences of those of those those biases.
Mindy: So, one of the things I really appreciated at Bigger Pockets was the culture and the values. It wasn’t just values on a board and nobody ever looked at them again. It wasn’t a culture of, well, however it happens, that’s what the culture is now. Um talk to me about your ideas on culture and values.
Scott: Sure. So, you know, I I’m one of the things I kind of come in and say is, this is not a family. This is a pro sports team, right? We’re not, like this is we’re not a family here. We’re we’re here for you if you have an personal emergency or those types of things, but this is this is a place where we’re going to perform and we’re going to work hard, and there’s a job to be done and that job needs to be done and that’s that’s a that’s a requisite for employment um on an ongoing basis in there. And and in that respect, I don’t think that culture is like some poster on the wall or a set of stated core values. I think it’s an aggregation of what you do every day as the leader or as the executive team. It’s what gets rewarded, what gets tolerated, and what gets addressed in the organization. And so I don’t really like come in with a bias towards these specific mission statement or values that are written down necessarily. That that’s I’m fine with a wide variety of variations that a team might come up with, but the values that I kind of exhibit in here, bias for action, um you know, uh a strong hypothesis, strategy, being accountable and responsive, um, um, knowing your business, being able to talk somebody through it. It’s not useful um uh if if you are really good at your job but no one understands what you’re doing in there. I’m going to probe and find out and you must be able to present um what you’re doing in some capacity that I can reasonably understand over some period of time. Those are values that that the organization will ultimately reflect after, you know, uh with with with with this kind of system or this this set of this set of structure in there. And so that that comes down to what we do, right? Like showing up time on time and prepared, giving your full attention to the conversations at hand, right? Asking questions, not just asking questions every time when it’s unnecessary, but making sure that like when when there’s an operating review and I’m attending, I might ask somebody who’s a front-line employee 10 questions in a row about an important area of the business if that’s a leverage point. And if they’re not if they’re not ready to answer that, that’s fine. I’m not going to grill them on the spot and say, oh, you got to get trouble. But I do expect them to know that over time if it’s a core leverage area and I expect everybody to be ready for a question from me on these things. I view it as a term of respect that I’m paying attention and asking questions and if your view is that it’s intimidating, that’s probably not a good fit for you at that organization um in there and you’ll probably opt for something else over time. In there. So that that’s kind of the standard there and and how I how I would try to to model it. And then it’s also about recognition, right? Calling out people who are are are are doing great work and making sure that there’s a a culture for me to say observe seeing what I’m seeing and making sure that that’s rewarded. but also that the that that I’m I’m getting a feedback loop of stuff I can’t see from other folks. so that that was where we had things like the gratitude channel or the shout outs at our all hands meetings for example that go on for several minutes until there’s like a 60-second awkward pause for example, because uh because I I couldn’t see I don’t I don’t always see despite this this effort to attempt to understand the organization, all the things that that folks especially where my my attention is not intensely focused, I don’t always see what’s going on in those other areas.
Mindy: The uh biggest problem I see in culture in a company and that can absolutely destroy your company by the way as a bad culture, is the uh the high performer who is a cultural cancer.
Scott: this is just part for the course, right? There’s always like a, there’s always, always almost by definition somebody who’s your best player, right? a at a at a given time, right? Like that’s just that’s just part of the reality for business sports, whatever. And that person sometimes behaves wonderfully and sometimes does not behave wonderfully. Um but almost always down the stack at some point, there’s somebody who’s behaving poorly who is in the top echelons of performance and you have a choice. you just know this is a given because it’s happens at every company and every every sports team eventually right over over time and it’s just how how are you going to handle handle that situation? And it almost never is the right call just to allow that person an exception environment in there. There are a couple times where that backfires but by and and and where that that we where addressing it can be very unpopular for example, but it’s almost always the right call in the end to address that and hold say, you’re going to be held to this standard or this is not the right fit for you um in there. And and again, there’s there there that’s a part of the job that every CEO or every division leader almost essentially will confront in their career over and over and over and over again. You got to have a playbook for doing that. So I think the the playbook is identify it early, develop contingency and alternatives to this person very quickly, um, and then attempt to change the leverage position of that individual, and then if you’re going to let it age, which you sometimes have to, in certain situations, you name a date by which you’re going to address it, right? It’s not I’m going to reflect this next year, revisit it. It’s by October 31st, we are going to have a decision on this person and we’re going to give them an ultimatum um that that will be you’re going to adhere to these standards that everyone else is or we’re going to we’re going to, you know, we’re going to change up things.
Mindy: And that’s a really difficult task. I am glad I never had to deal with that, but I did have to deal with that. I was the co-worker who was dealing with this toxic individual and what’s going on? Why is this person allowed to continue to act like this? It feels very frustrating from this point of view, and I have worked at companies where the CEO absolutely did not have this toolkit and they’re like, that they’re top performers, so whatever. You’re going to lose a lot of your other, maybe not top performers, but really good performers, your consistent employees, the the institutional knowledge. I’ve been here for eight years and you’re I’m you’re allowing this one person to remove my eight years of institutional knowledge because I can go get another job. I don’t need to deal with this person and or I can just leave. You know, I could just retire and be done. H- having this this toxic person is like having a playbook for handling a toxic person, I think should be number one, Scott, but I’ve never been a CEO. I’ll allow it to be to be down here in number six or whatever.
Scott: eight or nine times out of 10 when you when you handle these situations, you’re able to find a good resolution. The person adapts or evolves or concedes to the changes that are being imposed on the situation. And one or two times it’s a big problem, right? So it’s like it’s a real risk. Like this is not a a a situation you can blow over and just say, everyone conforms. It’s you have to have a plan to address this and you will you will address it over and over and over again um across a leadership experience in some form or another.
Mindy: Scott, next up is crisis and scenario management. Can you give me a real quick overview what this means?
Scott: Part of the job is making sure that profitability targets are hit, revenues hit, those types of things um from from a budgeting perspective, right? There’s a strategy and then there’s the constraint of needing to put up the financial performance um for the business and that that is necessary to to sustain execution towards the strategy. So, a big part of that is the contingency plan, right? So, what what are you going to do if things go wrong? You have to do this as part of your budgeting process and the best first step is the budget is the bonus plan, right? So a bonus plan is funded if we hit our profitability target, right? There’s a little bit of circularity there, so you have to have a strong CFO to model it, but if you have model a good bonus plan, if we hit our profit target, the bonus plan funds, it scales if we do better than that or hit certain KPIs, but you must hit the profitability target to do that. And in that case, if things go poorly, you just begin to lower the bonus plan at the beginning of the year and and and it’s a bonus. So so typically employees understand this, but it’s actually a really important tool for modeling mild variations to plan in the in the in the first bi and the first bit. After that, there are projects that you will not execute, right? That that will get cut um on a go-forward basis. This is before we get to to, you know, harder decisions like core contractors or employees. And then there is a premeditated reduction in force or layoff plan that is codified in there and says this is this is the amount of head count. It doesn’t necessarily name names but this is the amount of head count we will eliminate if we begin to fall below this target and think we’re going to come in below this. And you have to make that decision in the annual planning process and not at the moment in time because executives cannot be forced to make the hardest decision of their lives for many of them at the worst possible time. So that’s that’s you’re making this scenario plan beforehand. These are all playbook items, right? So there are plenty of times when the playbook does not apply and you got to play ball and figure out what the heck you’re going to do in a situation that you have not planned for and don’t have a framework around. But for whatever you can have a framework for, I think it’s really powerful, right? Next up is customer and market intelligence. At Bigger Pockets, we think this is this was a um uh a two-part two-way street, right? You use detailed analytics and you invest heavily in understanding patterns of customer behavior, what they’re saying, what they want. And then you talk to them over and over and over and over and over and over again. How many podcast we done here, Mindy?
Mindy: Uh, 700 and something.
Scott: 700 and something times I’ve talked to a customer or someone that this this industry touches on this podcast. And then I’ve also had how many calls with customers, how many times to post to the forums, how many times in the Facebook group, how many social comments, how many response to the blog post. So the aggregation of those is essential because it tells you which questions to collect data on. And then the data tells you whether you’re right or wrong about that customer insight at scale and then that informs the next set of questions downstream. So it’s a circular, it’s a circle that never ends in terms of customer and market intelligence and data feedback, right? You can’t do one without the other. It’s there’s no analyst that can just design a perfect data collection system. You have to know which question to ask and you have finite resources about how to ask and when to ask those questions. And we got word design, org design is a function of what your business needs. I almost always will bias at this point to a P&L ownership structure, right? There’s a like there’s different schools of thought where, you know, marketing handles leads, then sales handles the sales, and then operations handle the support. I’m a big function of I want the entire value or the entire P&L from revenue to costs owned by somebody. So I know when revenue’s going down who to ask, they can impose that different structure in place, and I’m fine with the matrices or the complexities or the trade-offs that come with it, but I find that if revenue is not accounted for, uh, in a in a in a business, then really big problems begin to emerge and it becomes very thorny to unpack them if different parts of the the the the the customer experience of the business are owned by different leaders who are not necessarily on the hook for dollars coming in. um, so the the structure is designed first and then people are placed in the structure second. I’ve got my structure and then I got my fictional perfect people and then I’ve got the people who are developing into those roles or who I need to hire to put into those roles, um, inside of that structure. The rest of my toolkit is, you know, 25 pages or so of scorecards, right? Very prescriptive descriptions of what I think an excellent head of product or head of technology or chief financial officer or head of marketing or CMO or whatever it looks like in great detail, the qualities that I think they should have, the mission of their role, and then the specific example outcomes that I would want to see in the first year after hiring them. And that we will not go through today, um, on there. And I may not publish that as a part of this because some of that is hard to do that in an illustrative example without, you know, talking about stuff that’s not that’s that that I shouldn’t be shared about in workings of of bigger pockets for example, or, you know, my my experiences in there. I also have some, there’s certain executive failures, um, that have come up over the years and or patterns, failure patterns. And the failure is not like if you get fired if you fail. A failure is like something you need to develop or figure out, right? So mine was for a long time conflict resolution. I was very adverse to conflict and I was very skilled at finding ways to not have a hard conversation with somebody and instead promote them or move them off of a problem that was really important and get somebody who could solve it onto the problem and this kind of blew in my face, you know, seven or eight years ago, um at one point and my my boss gave me very clear feedback about this failure pattern, this avoidance of conflict that I needed to address and it was really life-changing for me and very hard for me to accept the feedback as well. But there are many failure patterns like that that we can get into at some point. I’ve also posted about that on social. That’s the essence of the playbook, right? There’s the toolkit. There’s also hard artifacts, right? Like what is an example product roadmap or what is an example, you know, delegation of authority or those types of things um that that go along with it. Um, some of those I have, some of them I need to to map out. um, um and build at some point, right? Um, you know, but but those are, that’s it. That that’s how I would run a business. And you can see like I would not be a good candidate for some businesses. I might be an excellent candidate for other businesses with this playbook and and that that I think will help people, you know, you you probably disagreed with me in 20 places listening to this, um, or didn’t like it or wouldn’t want to work for me or maybe you love parts of it or whatever. but that’s who I am and how I how I do it and that will only help you if you can build evolve to something like this in your field, I think if you’re listening to this.
Mindy: I enjoyed working with you, Scott. I still enjoy working with you.
Scott: This is what I do. I mean, I still do versions of this, like light down versions for Bigger Pockets Money here with what what what we’re what we’re talking about. It’s just there’s no, I don’t have to bring the intensity of the CEO every single day um to to to this situation or or put in these like 60-hour weeks in order to do it. But it’s there’s there’s always pieces that translate.
Mindy: Yes, there’s always pieces that translate. I can see that if I was looking for a new job, I could prepare myself for a job interview so much better than I did the last time I prepared myself for a job interview, which was 11 years ago now. Yeah, wow. That was it was it’s almost 11 years ago now. This would be very helpful for somebody who is looking to level up their career. I think that I think there’s a lot of tips for people in this episode. And I thank you for sharing this because this is not something, this document, I’m looking at the document right now. This is not a document that you can breeze through in five minutes. It’s not a document that you breathed through writing in five minutes. This is absolutely a lot of hard one knowledge and I think that our listeners will appreciate it too. Thank you, Scott.
Scott: I think a lot of organizations would hate it but also benefit greatly from implementation of a structure as rigid as this one um in there. There’s a lot of advantages that come from it even though it does it leaves nowhere to hide in the organization around that because the CEO is personally drilling into the most important lever at almost any given time in there and that that makes it very difficult uh in there and that’s not something that a lot of people that some people that something that that some people really don’t like in there. I’ve got I’ve got feedback about the CEO’s directly asking me questions in this. Well, yes. Yes. That’s going to happen here, you know, here.
Mindy: Those are the people that don’t need to work there anymore. That’s all this. I I am uh I’m very proud of the the hard one knowledge and I think this is like a core skill set and I wanted to make sure that uh before too much time passed, I I’d written it down so in case I ever need to use it again at some point later in my my life.
Mindy: Well, Scott, where can people find this document?
Scott: Oh, you can find it at biggerpocketsmoney.com/resources. Um I may in the future create a page like CEO toolkit, but for now it’s at slash resources. You can download it, it’ll be a word doc, you can modify it or use it to inspire things. You can create a list of artifacts. You’ll probably need to create spreadsheets or PowerPoint presentations or whatever if you really want to do this, but what I would recommend is a takeaway from today’s show is start doing this, put a draft together for your job. Do it at work, in deadtime, right? This is some this is your job. You’ll be using it at your job for many years. It’ll make you better at your job. And one day, whenever you want to go interview for that next job, you’ll be able to bring this toolkit and translate it in there and if they don’t like your toolkit and your style that you’ve hard developed, that was the wrong fit for you anyways. Go find somewhere that will do it. You’re going to impress way more than you’re going to um uh scare away if you come in with a clear opinion on how to do your job.
Mindy: And if you scare away that person, that’s not the person you want to work for anyway.
Scott: If your toolkit is genuinely excellent. You probably also want to get a lot of feedback on it. And again, my toolkit, this is not all me, right? This is not me. I did not come up with this. This is borrowed from EOS, from four disciplines of execution, from countless hours of coaching from various board members, from Josh Dorkin’s best practices, from Mike Zalski uh best practices, from books, from resources, and from little nuggets like that one CEO’s comment on some call from years ago, um, all built up to to build this, right? And that’s how yours your yours will, that’s how yours will look and it’ll be and it will be constantly evolving, right? There’ll be things about this in 10 years if I ever use it again, that’ll be completely changed.
Mindy: You just suggested that people get feedback on their toolkit. I’m going to ask people to give you feedback on your toolkit. If you’ve downloaded this, if you’ve listened to this episode, downloaded the toolkit and you want to reach out to Scott, his email is Scott@biggerpocketsmoney.com and he would love to hear from you.
Scott: Yeah, I I will also say this, I love this stuff. I don’t I’m I I don’t love the the pressure, the tension, the the the the long work weeks, the hard conversations and all those things and this, but I love, I love business, personal finance, all this kind of stuff. So, if your organization could benefit from this and you want some free, only consulting on pieces of this, I’m happy to also talk about that. I love doing this um and and and would love to scratch that itch in some way, um, in there and and and and if I if I can be of help, just like I we we answer all the questions we get from personal finance uh uh folks on a weekly basis here that that that email us. Um so please do, we’re very accessible on this and I’ll I’ll I’ll put a stop to that if it gets overwhelming at some point, but for now, like we we love it and we would love, love all that that all we’re happy to answer any questions.
Mindy: Yes, we are. And if you have a question for me that is not CEO related, Mindy@biggerpocketsmoney.com. If you have a question for me that’s CEO related, I’m just going to forward it to Scott.
Scott: I think this is a great stopping point.
Mindy: Should we get out of here?
Scott: Let’s do it.
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