Paul Witkay - Alliance of CEOs Founder

Hey there. Welcome to another episode of the Small Business Show. I'm Shannon Jean coming to you from the west coast.

And I'm Dave Hamilton coming to you from the east coast. But I'll be heading towards the west coast soon, so, you know, lots of travel, but that's how it works, right? We're always. Lots of crazy things going on and that's.

Sometimes you gotta meet face to face, right?

Yeah, yeah, you do. No, you do. What you're hearing, the sigh you're hearing there is the sigh of a person staring down the barrel of 11 days of travel and not really fully prepared yet for all of the things that I will need to do. Like I'm going to be working on. I'm speaking at a couple of different things while I'm. While I'm rolling. And so I like it. It would be great to leave with everything like totally locked up. That's not how the world works. Of course not how Dave's world works. So it's going to very much be a working trip, the mobile office. So. Yeah, but it's fine. It's all good. Ye.

Fine.

Yeah, that's good.

Well, speaking of meeting with people, you know, we've talked a lot about on the show about advisors and stuff and I'm really excited to have. We've got a great guest that's going to be on in a few minutes and we're going to talk about creating your own board of advisors and joining groups that have advisors available to you. I'm really excited to. To have a founder of a well, very well respected company here in the Bay Area.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I.

It's gonna be cool.

Yeah, yeah. He's. He's got some good things to say. Shall we get.

Yeah, let's do it, man.

In the alliance, I actually do believe very much in diversity where it's different business models and different industries and different types of ways of thinking. And so they actually will challenge each other to think differently and to challenge themselves to think about things differently. And so it's not about just best practices. A lot of people think when you come together in these groups that they have a specific issue or topic and somebody else has the answer for it. At the strategic level, there's never a perfect answer or rarely a clear answer. It's forcing us to think deeper and more creatively to keep searching for that better way of doing things.

Dave, you know, one of the most frequently repeated pieces of advice that we always give on the show is to get involved, build a board of advisors around Your small business, right?

Absolutely. Well, yeah, you can't. It's hard to do it alone without someone that you're accountable to. And if you don't have a boss, well, you know, you need to assign someone to that role.

Yeah, yeah, that's right. And you know, connecting with a diverse group of other business owners, executives, I mean it's just a great way to not only build relationships, but it brings experiences to your business that you may be lacking in. You get a chance. And we've had guests on the show that have talked about this where to your point, being held accountable, following up on advice, you get their insight, critique the knowledge when you meet with these folks. One of the groups that we've had mentioned on the show a number of the times is The alliance of CEOs here in Northern California. And we're really happy to have Paul Witkay, founder of the alliance, on the show today. Thank you so much for joining us, Paul. We're really happy to have you here.

Thank you for inviting me. Look forward to it.

Yeah, we appreciate it. So today it's going to be a little different. We want to talk about your business experience, your journey and you know, let's just start at the beginning. What was the impetus for starting the alliance? And second part here is was there a certain benchmark that you hit when you realize like, hey, you know, this is a viable business here, something's really working and I've got it put together.

Well, the second question, I think I'll let you know when we get there.

I like it.

But basically the idea for starting the alliance in 1996 or the chain of events that caused me to start it in 96 started really around 1991 when I was named head of strategy for the US business of a big French company. We're doing a billion dollars. And in the process it was clear to me that we needed to move the headquarters to a sister company that was based down in Houston, Texas. I didn't want to go to Texas. I love it here in the Bay Area. I took over a little healthcare company that we spun out of the company because we only did business the west coast. And shortly afterwards I was asked to join a group of CEOs that ran healthcare companies. For me it was a total no brainer. I had no background in healthcare. I needed to get up speed and how better than to go meet with a bunch of healthcare CEOs. And I still remember the first meeting like it was yesterday. Walked in the room, there's eight guys sitting around the table. They're all smarter than me. And it was so open and candid. It was like even back in business school, talking about big, strategic, confidential things. But there's no politics. I went home that night and I told my wife, I said, man, I would love to do that every day. It's strategic, it's stimulating, it's fun. And she didn't give me a piece of advice. She said, well, you know, we got two kids now. Don't be stupid.

I've never heard.

That's good advice.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes, it's good advice. And we've been married 42 years, so I do try to. Try to listen. And so, anyway, so I built up the healthcare company, and we sold it in 1996, and they asked me to go to Houston again, and I said, no, thank you, and start the alliance. And one of my core philosophies was the value of diversity. The healthcare group was wonderful, but they all thought like healthcare CEOs with the same set of assumptions. And healthcare is one of the most dysfunctional industries in the country, is ripe for innovation, but innovation typically comes from outside people that don't have know all the rules or all the things you can't do. And so you asked. That's how it really started. It was really started for me. And I love talking with people that are much smarter than me. I love trying to understand how the world works. So I'm always looking for people I can learn from. And so the idea of starting the alliance and surrounding myself with a group of CEOs and just fostering really deep, honest communications and challenging each other's strategic assumptions just sounded like a lot of fun. If it didn't work for a business, I'd meet a lot of cool people and probably want to work for one of them. So that was the impetus. And after I got it up to about 50 members and five groups of CEOs, it looked like we could probably do okay to send our kids to college and have a nice life.

That's awesome. How long did it take to get up to that 50 members, do you think?

Well, actually, it only took a couple years. Okay, start three groups in the first nine months. And it's not easy, but I got very lucky. First members were fantastic, and we still have some of them around today.

That's awesome. So let's talk about those first connections, because I think that can be difficult when you're first getting started. How did you sell that value proposition to try to bring in those members that were, you know, so Crucial for your success?

Well, first of all, I got really lucky. I don't think I could start it today. It is so much. It is literally 10 times harder to connect to CEOs than it was 20 years ago.

And why is that? Is it because there's just so many people trying to connect with them or, you know, you would think it'd be easier now, but.

Well, email was just getting underway. Only, you know, our big company CEOs actually had their EAS printing out their emails for them.

Oh, that's great.

Yeah, throwback to those days. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So there were still phone calls and it was still. It just wasn't quite as extreme of information streams as it is today. You could actually dial the phone for a CEO and get them on the line. One out of ten dials. So frankly, I started with brute force. I was an executive with a big French company And the only CEOs I knew in the Bay Area were competitors of my old company and nobody I wanted to talk to. So it was really just. I bought a list of 4000 names. 2000 of those names were crap and the other 2000 was just brute force dialing through. Until I met. I just wanted to meet them. And I think you asked about what the sales pitch was, but I never. I don't believe I could sell a CEO anything. They can smell a salesperson coming a mile away and they will argue with anything you say. So if you try to convince them you have a value proposition that will help them, they'll debate that with you. So frankly, all I did, I just wanted to meet them and learn how they think and what they were, how they got to their positions and why they founded or joined their company and their strategies for how they're going to succeed. And frankly, I was just lucky that so many of them realized that this world was changing really, really fast. And they understood the concept of being able to have totally open, candid dialogues and conversations with other CEOs that thought differently from themselves. Fortunately, they got the concept and the first members were just such wonderful people.

Did you target CEOs where their companies were below a certain size where you could make an assumption you might not always be right, but it was a safer bet to make an assumption that they didn't already have a board of directors or a board of advisors that was already doing this for them?

That's a great question. Actually, to start with, I didn't know. I just started talking to CEOs because frankly, I work for a multi billion dollar global company, but there's not that many of those CEOs around. The pyramid gets pretty tight at the top. So I talked to everybody and the first three CEOs within about two weeks I met three CEOs. I met other ones, but three that wanted to join. The first one was running a public biotech company over in Berkeley. He had run a billion dollar Swiss pharmaceutical company before coming, coming here. And he taught me all about biotech over lunch. And at the end of the lunch he said, Paul, this alliance thing sounds interesting. Put together a group of folks like me and I'd be interested. So I mean, he didn't give me a check, but he gave me the, the confidence that this just might work.

Wow, that's crazy. I never would have assumed that the CEO of a public company would see the value here or need the value here. Right. I mean they. Not that they don't need something like this, but that they didn't already have it, I guess is what I'm trying to say. Like that there was a void there today. I would find that hard to believe that there would be somebody in a position like that. But maybe I'm the one that's naive about this.

Does it Paul, does it go back to that? Creating a space where nobody wants anything from them. They're not trying to impress investors, make somebody happy. They can actually feel confident and safe to just, you know, put it out there and they're going to get some real world critique without, without repercussion maybe in some cases.

Right, exactly. You get it head on. They are people just whether it's a small company or big company, they really are just human beings who are leading companies and we're all just trying to figure it out. And frankly, the big company CEOs are so much more in the spotlight and they can't talk to the. No to their board like they would want to. Nobody, no professional CEO goes in their board and says, well, gee, I don't know what we ought to do. What do you guys want to do?

Yeah. Now when you put it that way, it totally makes sense. Right? Yeah, well, that's right.

Will be open.

Sure.

And they're never 100. I have never met a CEO over the age of 22 that actually thought they had their strategy nailed 100.0% right. They have a strategy and such, but they're always looking for what they missed. And whether they're going too fast or too slow or too broad or too focused or, you know, do they have the right people? You know, it's their you know, the right pricing model, should they be international or should be drawing back? What are we doing today with China or all the other things going on? They, frankly, the bigger the company and the more intelligent and more. More successful they are. I quickly realized they actually understood the concept fastest because the gap between what they knew and they had. They had good egos. They didn't lack for ego, but they also had a greater understanding of what they didn't know. And as this world was changing, particularly back in the 90s, where we really started hitting an inflection point with the Internet and literally globalization, where the containerization of products could be shipped, could be manufactured anywhere, shipped anywhere, sold over the Internet, everything was starting to change and nobody really had the answers of where it was going. So if they could truly discuss their. Not only their intelligence strategies, but also their doubts and with other CEOs that they could truly trust, it was even more powerful.

Yeah. If you're a business owner and you're listening to this, my guess is you are salivating for this scenario because the idea of being able to walk into a room and confidentially say to other really smart people, I am lost in this scenario, or I don't know what to do. Like, that's hugely powerful. Because the truth is you're lost and you don't know what to do about something. You know, that's just how it goes when you're leading a company. Sometimes you're leading into uncharted waters. In fact, often that's. Yeah, that's great.

Yeah, for sure.

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Great. So Paul, let's back up a little bit. Can you give us just a quick description of how the, the alliance works? And then, and then I want to jump in and talk about how it might be for a small business owner. We've had all kinds of different size business owners on the show here, from, you know, multibillion dollar companies to, you know, companies just getting started. So give us a brief rundown of how things work and then we'll jump into talking about small businesses.

Yeah. And frankly, as the alliance really is pretty simple. All we do is bring CEOs together and create environments where they can talk very openly, very candidly about some of their most sensitive strategic challenges or opportunities. How we do that is a little complex, but basically for the member experience, they generally, you know, we put together these private groups. We get to know everyone before they're invited in because we have to be able to create a trust and respect. We, we really try to maximize the diversity so they think differently and we'll challenge each other. But we, so who they're in the room with really matters.

Sure.

We create these private groups and most of them meet monthly for half a day. And it's, we have alliance group directors who are many if not most of them are very accomplished CEOs themselves have run multiple companies. A number of them have been former members. And they use a unique methodology that forces them to really challenge at a strategic level and to really imagine how things could be differently. And we create more ideas by thinking about somebody else's situation than our own. Basically, what you ask, they meet monthly for half a day. And then early on, I realized something I didn't really conceive at the very beginning. But I was meeting all these CEOs that from every industry with different skill sets, different experiences, different networks. And I couldn't help but see some synergies between them, what somebody was trying to do going into a different vertical market, going into South America or somewhere else someone else had done 100 times before, it could really help them. All of a sudden we realized it became a community. And so we're not a per se networking organization, but I've never seen more effective networking because we really get to know these people deeply. We know confidentially, we never violate any confidentiality or privacy. But so often the first members set the culture of being willing to help each other. If it was strategic and substantive, they're there to help. And so that's really pretty simple how it works. Just they become part of a group, they meet, they get really well known and then they have access to the larger collective community as needed.

That's great. So as a small business owner, reading about the alliance of CEOs or going to your website, you know, you may be a little intimidated looking at some of these large companies, public or VC backed companies. How do you manage? Because I know you, you like you mentioned a number of times, bringing together diversity of experience, different size companies. We've had guests on the show that were members that, you know, were at different levels of, you know, building small businesses and, and growing. Do you mix things up? Do you create, you know, different types of groups to, to, to deal with that type of thing?

Well, first of all, we talked a little bit about starting the alliance.

Yep.

And I mentioned the first CEO I met was a public company CEO, but the other two I met in those first two weeks that wanted to join. One was a classic entrepreneur, a $5 million closely held private business, family business, wonderful individual, built a great business. On paper, if you took out the equity, he actually made more money than the public company CEO did. He had a very nice business. Yeah, but you would never put them in the same room, the same strategy group because they had different resources, different opportunities, different threats. And so actually they did fit into different groups in the larger community. They actually could be a value each other on certain topics or issues because oftentimes a small business knows an awful lot about digital marketing or about some widget or something that actually could be of great interest to the larger company. So the private groups are really by who is going to really strategically challenge each other and relate to each other. The third person I met was actually kind of a mid sized company. He was a Harvard mba, well trained. But he's never going to go public where he's not going to have quarterly analyst calls. He's looking at the world, a little larger world than the small local business was. And so frankly, I realized right at the very beginning that these you know, that the curation of these groups really mattered, the fit. And so I, I started three different groups at the same time for these three individuals. And so pretty much any CEO I've met at that time could fit into one of those three categories that's really smart, richer. But back to your basic question. Is it the way you phrase the question almost implies that bigger companies or public companies are better or more difficult or that different from small companies? I have just as much respect for small little companies as I do for the big ones. If you remember the movie Trading Places with Eddie Murphy.

Sure. You guys, a couple of. Just a couple of bookies. That's right.

Yeah. I often wondered who would do better if they traded places. The small company CEO. Going into the CEO of a big public company, they have resources that are unbelievable. They have an executive team that can basically do every function and keep the, keep the train running on the tracks. Or would it be the CEO of a big company, lots of success and intelligence and all that. Running a small company, having to do everything themselves. Nobody understands cash flow business.

Yep, that's true.

Let's go to the bank or the investors and such. So I'm not sure which one's tougher at a really core level within the alliance, they're all just human beings trying to make an impact, trying to build a sustainable business that's good for their employees, good for their customers. And then they might have a different scope of what their impact desires or ambition might be, but they also want to have good lives that means different things to different people. So frankly, I don't look into them that differently, other than the nature and scope of the strategic challenges they're facing. But they're not better or worse. I love them all.

No, that's great. Yeah, that's awesome to hear. So we met a few months ago, had a beer. We were talking about our business experiences. One of the things that really stuck with me is before we left, you asked me, you said, hey, is there anything I can do for you? Any help that something I could do for your businesses? And it really kind of struck as we talk about this concept of adding value all the time here. And so, you know, this willingness to, of you to reach out and add value to a relationship, certainly that's got to be one of the secrets of your success. Would you agree?

Well, I, I don't know about that particularly, but I, I will frame it this way. The first members, the very first group that started up, they became very tight and they had an attitude of they didn't demand, you know, what am I going to do for them? They didn't demand, what's the ROI of my time here? They just basically trusted that if I hang around these smart people and challenge them and vice versa, they're going to learn something. But they created a culture where they asked, instead of what are you going to do for me? They asked, how can we help each other? What can we learn from each other and how can we help each other? And that was just a wonderful culture that's been helped build the alliance community. And whether it's big or small, they don't judge each other that way. It's just, what can we learn and how can we help each other?

That's great.

It's not easy running a business.

Oh, yeah.

That's one thing we've become experts on is the concept that it is not easy to run a business. In fact, we proved that to ourselves through time and again. But. But that's okay. Like, that's how we learn. It's good. Yeah, that's right. Perfect.

Awesome. Okay. Say, Paul, speaking of, you know, challenges of running a business and how difficult it is, which we certainly would agree, you know, we all make mistakes. I'm sure I've made more than any of us here on this, this call. And we're big fans of mistakes on the show because they teach us so much, especially being able to look back on them. What would you say is a mistake that you made at some point in your career that stuck with you and taught you a valuable lesson as a business owner?

Well, it's a lot of them.

I have same problem.

I think there was back in 1999, back in the heyday of the dot com boom, several of our members came to me and said, paul, we love the alliance, love our group, but their businesses were changing so fast and these were dot coms and saying, my business models change every three months. I'm competing with all these big companies for stock options, everything else. I really need to be with a group of CEOs that understand my problems and are dealing with the same types of things. Somewhere in a business course, I think I was told, you're supposed to listen to your customers. And so I did. And so I said, well, that makes sense. So I put together an alliance group of basically.com CEOs and it actually worked fine. They came together, they had good conversations, they liked each other, and nobody said anything negative about it. But I started noticing a difference behavior in that particular group. And what I noticed was I could tell that they were. They were consciously or unconsciously rating each other as they were in the same type of business. They could. They could tell whether they were further along. And oftentimes the metric might be who raised the most amount of money, revenue, or the most employees or something of that nature. And they started rating each other without saying it out loud. And after about six months, the one that was the biggest and furthest along said, paul, you know, love the group. Everything else, but my travel schedule is getting so bad, so I think we need to leave. And so frankly, it became, you know, and the ones at the bottom were there saying, at the bottom. The smallest ones would say, boy, this is great. You know, I'm learning from these other people. And so it became more of a peer group. And what I learned was actually stick more to my, you know, what my belief where it's, you know, the alliance, I really don't think of it as a peer group. Some people call that because they are all CEOs or such, but peer groups in general, in my definition, really have a lot in common, whether they're all knitters or volleyball players or something. And it's kind of best practices of how you play the game that you've chosen to play better. In the alliance, I actually do believe very much in diversity, where it's different business models, different industries, and different types of ways of thinking. And so they actually will challenge each other to think differently and to challenge themselves to think about things differently. And so it's not about just best practices. A lot of people think when you come together in these groups that they have a specific issue or topic and somebody else has the answer for it. At the strategic level, there's never a perfect answer or rarely a clear answer. It's forcing us to think deeper and more creatively to keep searching for that better way of doing things.

No, that's great. It makes sense, right? Having an outside person that's not necessarily day in, day out in a similar business, looking at your problems and saying, hey, we, you know, we tried this and this might be helpful. Looking at it that way. That's great. Makes a lot of sense. Well, you know, there's. There's so much to learn here. One of the things as we start to wrap this up is, you know, you've sat in all these meetings for years, and not all of them, but I'm sure some of them over the years, you've been in it, doing it for 23 years. And I'm sure, I mean, I say on this show, you know, I always learn the most as I'm absorbing all this awesome, you know, experience. I would imagine it must be similar to you that you're picking up all this great stuff and interacting with these, like you said, really smart people, you know, have you picked up. Is there one thing that you've learned over the years that you think is a. Is a really, you know, crucial thing that you can pass on to the thousands of business owners that are listening to this podcast today?

Wow. I've learned so much. I just wake up in the morning and so excited to see these folks because I learned so much. They're doing such amazing things. They have really difficult challenges and they see their way through them. So I've learned a ton. I do think the probably the one that they've helped, and if anything, we probably help each other, is always just trying to get clarity, clarity as to what we're really trying to accomplish, what's really important, whether it's in our business, you know, and where we're taking it. The greater clarity and the more compelling the vision, the easier it is to attract people around that will share that vision and be motivated to join you and motivated to stay and build the business for myself, because you put this in my term personally, as to what I've learned, I have never been bored one day finding the lines. I get so much satisfaction and joy out of learning from these people, seeing how this world is changing, dealing with amazing people that are ethical, hard working, making a difference, creating jobs, creating new ways of doing things, and also so willing to share with others and help each other that, you know, I'm not looking to build a big business out of the alliance. I think it does great value. But I, frankly, in a very selfish way, I built the alliance to enable me to do what I love to do and hang around the people I love to hang around.

Yeah, that's a. That's a big deal right there. Yeah. I don't think you can understate the value in that of, you know, your own creating something for yourself that you love that then in turns, you know, help so many other people. I think that's fantastic.

And there's a lot to that. Hang around with people, other people that you want to hang around. Like, that's a really important thing. Whether it's, you know, in your case, you're, you know, these are your customers that you're hanging around with, but also it's true of your employees and all of that stuff. You just want to make sure you're with people that you Know, if you're going to spend every day doing this, it should at the very best base of it, be with people you enjoy being with. Yeah, that's good advice.

That's great. Paul, thank you so much for coming on the show today to share your experience, your knowledge for building the alliance. You know, really have a ton of respect for your success. What's the best way for listeners to learn more about the alliance of chief executives and to connect with you if they'd like to?

Well, if you're interested or you're a leader, we'd be happy to talk with you. Our. Our website is@allianceofceos.com and we have connections with leaders throughout the world from our friendships with other CEO organizations and such. So, frankly, be happy to talk with you and see if we can help you in any way.

That's great. Thank you so much, sir. We really appreciate it.

Thank you. And thanks for the work you guys do. We share a passion for working with people who lead companies, and I love what you guys do and the passion you bring to it.

That's great.

Yeah, we appreciate it. We have a great time here. It's usually the best part of my week, and I love getting together with everybody.

All right, thanks, guys.

Well, that was awesome, man. Gosh, you know, other than the background noise here and there from, from the busy people surrounding Paul, but, but I think we were able to get through that with some editing and. Yeah, yeah, that. That's stuff. Yeah, man.

Yeah, it's great. I've wanted to have him. Have him on the show for a while. You know, he's connected with so many people and, you know, I loved his talk about, you know, it doesn't matter what size business that you're in. You know, you're facing difficult problems and, you know, you have this resource and, you know, you can check out their website, see, you know, learn about them. They, they always like to talk to people, and especially if you're here in Northern California, it's a great resource. And I think he had a lot of great things to say.

Well, yeah, just, I mean, he, he really did kind of, you know, explain the value proposition of that for wherever you are, you know, like having. Having that confidential. The ability to have that honest, confidential conversation. It's huge. I mean, I, you know, I, I've talked about how I've done some of that with score and, man, I mean, it really did helped me change my, My outlook on my business. I had an honest outlook on my business because I was able to walk in and, like, I didn't know these people from Moses, and I probably won't interact with them again.

That's the power of it. Right.

Outside of that scenario. And so I could just be honest and walk in. You know, we call it business therapy, but it's true, you know, like, that works really, really well, so.

Yeah, it does.

Yeah.

So, yeah, I mean, I think the key takeaways, if, you know, you're a small business owner, you're struggling, whether you want to join a group or create, you know, get your banker, your accountant, your attorney together, you know, once a month for lunch and just toss out ideas. You need to create that type of space that you can really get some outside opinion looking at your business.

Yeah, just honest.

Very helpful.

Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, I mean, I. I suppose you can create, you can craft this group out of anyone. I. I would caution people, your attorney, your banker, your accountant, they do have a vested interest in your success beyond their ego. Right. Like. Like the folks at score, they want to see you succeed only so that they can say to themselves, huh, I did it again.

You know, I love the SCORE option.

Yeah, yeah. Like, you know, and. And the same with this alliance of CEOs. Like, these are not your partners. They are not your vendors. They are just other people in similar boats. And you can sort of, you know, that there's. I find that there's a better level of candor that you can have with for sure that anonymous. I mean, it's not anonymous, but you know, that. That. That person that's not beholden to you or you're not beholden to them. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. Yeah, I think that's powerful, too. We'll put the link. Links to the SCORE organization in the show notes because they're all over the country. They're everywhere. Yeah, that's great. And we'll link back to the alliance of CEOs, and, you know, we thank Paul for coming on. Hey, you know, if you want to help the small business show, we would love to have you leave us a quick review. Just go to business show.com and literally it'll take you about 15 to 20 seconds and just let us know what you think.

Yeah, it makes a huge difference. Makes a huge difference. Thanks so much for listening, folks. Thanks for your reviews. Thanks for sending in all your questions. Thanks to our sponsors, Mint Mobile.com SBS and Textexpander.com podcast. Keep living that charmed life. We'll see you next week.