Being the CEO is the worst job ever

You had a tweet earlier that I saw today about CEO being the worst job, and I actually, I reposted it. I don't know if you saw that.

I did not see it, but thank you for reposting it.

No, I reposted it 'cause I agree it's a terrible job. And you're the CEO. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the funny thing, and I said Dharmesh and Neil had the best setup as co-founders, and it's enviable. No direct reports, and you get to focus on what you want to focus on.

Yeah, I have no direct reports. You are right on that. My title is the CMO, but Salo, who's the VP of marketing, really does run marketing. I'll give him advice on strategy, 2 to 3 times a month and I create a lot of my own content. So, he doesn't have to do a lot of that. But I don't have to run any division. I don't have direct reports. I still work at least 60, 70-hour weeks.

I believe it. So, the good thing about Neil is he's never ever cared about titles before, ever, right? And so, it's good to have humility. A lot of people care about titles. They care about status. Neil doesn't care about that stuff, right? He's just like, I want to work on what I want to work on, which is like strategy. I want to work on marketing and that's all I want to do.

And it's funny because a lot of people said, if you're going to work that many hours and if you really believed in the vision of the company, because people started leaving comments and messaging me, they're like, why wouldn't you be the CEO unless you really don't believe in it? And I'm like, no, it has nothing to do with that. I'm a terrible manager. I do well on small teams, but I think I'm an amazing individual contributor and executor. And I perform the best when I'm just doing stuff on my own. And I always saw that as a negative or a downfall. But I think you mentioned last time we were recording how Mark Zuckerberg talks about one of his great strengths is being an amazing individual contributor, right?

More so, he doesn't believe in delegation. He believes in being involved as much as possible.

Got it. So that's different than what I'm doing. Yeah, I do like being involved where I want to be. Yeah, I am a terrible manager. So I hate the concept of CEO.

So here, like, and I think you have an answer for this, but you know, a typical CEO's job is to recruit, it's to make sure that there's cash in the bank, right? Like financing, whatever, if it's closing sales or closing funding, right?

Okay, so I don't deal too much with the recruiting, but I do help with the recruiting and I vet people that I want to vet for certain roles.

Yeah.

I deal with the cash in the bank.

And then vision.

Well, going back to the cash in the bank really quickly, the CFO mainly deals with that.

But you watch your money like a hawk.

I do.

My finance team was like, Neil balks whenever he sees a cost over $2,500. I was like, that's because he's He's like, we should be like Neil. We should be like Neil. Yeah, because he'll send me a bill for like $200. I'm like, what is this? It's not this. And you start going. Yeah.

And I dive into it. And then I'm like, what was the last time bill for $100 here? But I don't watch the money that carefully because most expenses don't come to me. But when I see them, I nitpick all of them.

You look at the big stuff.

I look at the big stuff. I actually look at the small stuff too when I can see it or when they do share it with me.

But by the way, Neil's OCD, everyone. So yeah.

But when you said the thing about money in the bank, I actually don't really look at our bank account. I looked at our bank account for the first time in the last— actually, you're right. I look at the bank account probably 2 to 3 times a day.

Yeah. That's like your— so Neil used to look at his analytics every day, and now the new analytics is his bank account.

I'm like, oh yeah, because I get a notification. I can't just log into my bank account, right? Because I have multiple-factor authentication. And yeah, you're right. I look at our bank account multiple times. But yeah, and then vision.

Vision.

I am deeply involved in the vision.

And this is interesting because usually it's the CEO's job. But I think because Neil's so involved, he talks so much to his executives that you're constantly driving the vision in every day and it goes through them. That's how I see it. Tell me if I'm wrong. You're right.

They execute on what I think is best.

Yeah.

And a lot of times what I think is best doesn't work out to be best. And then they say, I told you so. And then I'm like, you're right. I should have listened. And then I go back to their way. But then if I have ideas, I still go and do it. And I don't care. I look at everything as like a big experiment bucket.

Yeah.

And I spend a lot of my money on experimentation. If it doesn't work out, I don't care. I just keep trying.

So if I were to ask you, what's the 10-year vision for the company? What would you say?

Be a global ad agency.

Okay, there you go. By the way, Neil and I have an agency owners group called the Agency Owners Association. All you have to do, just go to marketingschool.io/agency. Once again, it's marketingschool.io/agency to learn more. And Now back to the show.

We get enterprise contracts, but we don't really get enterprise contracts. And when I mean really get it, some of our competitors are getting $100 million contracts. I'm not talking about managing $100 million in ad spend. We do way more than that. We even have clients who spend more than $100 million in ad spend. I'm talking about getting a contract where organization pays you $100 million a year for the work, not pass-through where you're spending a lot of that on media and—

Actual revenue.

Actual revenue, right? We are not true enterprise where we're getting 9-figure contracts. We can get 8-figure contracts, we can get 7-figure contracts. We've never gotten a 9-figure per year contract. And if you look at some of the big ad agencies, they have massive contracts like that, even like $50 million annual contracts and stuff like that. And we're not at that level yet, but that's the goal within the 10-year and the plan is turning—

Yeah, and I would say you're already doing a lot of, you're moving in that direction, right? Like you're taking action on it because there's a lot of global expansion happening right now. And so I, That vision actually works because people, A, you're talking about it, 2, you're actually doing it. Yes.

And I'm heavily involved in M&A. And I probably talked to my CEO. He made a joke because I was leaving to Qatar over last weekend and I'm back now. But when I was leaving, it was a Friday, I was leaving on a Sunday. And I'm like, oh, cool. I'll talk to you when I get back. And he laughed. He's like, you'll probably call me tomorrow, which was a Saturday. And I'm like, I'm going to try not to. And I did not call him on Saturday.

You called him on Sunday. I called him on Sunday though. Oh, and then people— that's a whole nother conversation. Well, what about work-life balance, Neil?

I don't have work-life balance. I just work and most of my executives work and we have that culture. But I do try to tell them to have some sort of a balance. The big thing that I try to tell my executives, because in bad economies like this, a lot of stuff just doesn't go the way we want and people get frustrated. They're like, man, take one step forward, we get 2 steps backwards, keep getting kicked. I tell him like, dude, the business is still growing. It's really healthy. I'm like, don't take this crap home. Yeah. You know, you got to just keep it at work. And my CEO, funny enough, works from home because we do virtual working. And I was like, dude, you just got to keep it, keep it at work and just don't take it home. And it's okay. We're self-funded. We don't have investors. We do fine.

Like, one foot in front of the other. That's all it is every single day. And here's the problem with being a CEO, right? Like, as Angry, we don't— we have a couple more minutes here, but like, if you're super angry, you can't show it, right? You have to, you have to be like an even keel all the time. And even if you think the company is about to like implode or something like that, you still have to keep a straight face, right? Because the moment people think that like your mind is screwed up, they're all screwed up, right? So you got to keep it going no matter what. You have, you have to be leading by example all the time. And you have to be— Frank Slootman said this, the guy that stepped down from Snowflake, right? And their stock dropped like 20%.

Yeah, I saw that. He was like ex-ServiceNow CEO.

Yeah, he's like, you got to push the pace no matter what. Every single day you got to drive the vision forward. And as exhausting as it is, too bad, that's your job. And it's hard, but it is what it is. This message is brought to you by Single Grain. Single Grain is a marketing agency ran by yours truly. Single Grain does paid media, SEO, creative, conversion rate optimization, and has worked with a handful of companies such as Uber, Amazon, Airbnb, Salesforce. to startups, venture-backed startups, a lot of different companies. And ultimately our mission is to do innovative marketing that drives customers. If you want to learn more, just go to singlegrain.com. Again, it's single grain, grain like wheat, and we'll see you on the other side.

Elon Musk sues OpenAI. You see the headlines in the articles?

I saw the headlines, yes.

So for anyone who hasn't been caught up to speed with this, Elon Musk pretty much said, hey, When I originally created OpenAI with Sam Altman and who's the third guy? Brock something?

Brock Lesnar.

Is it Brock Lesnar?

No, Brock Lesnar is the wrestler. I want to see if you even know.

I don't know.

No, it's Brock. And then there's also Ilya, the other one that did the coup to get Sam out.

Either way, their mission was to—

Greg Brockman.

Okay. Either way, their mission was to build this for humanity and create a better product. help people. And he's pretty much saying now it's just a vehicle for Microsoft. And if you look at the board of directors and who's in place, none of them are really in place to keep going with the initial vision. Keep in mind, Elon put quite a bit of money in the early days.

He's a co-founder.

Yeah. When OpenAI was created, I don't know if other people put in money, but what's interesting about the lawsuit is, A, he's in the AI space himself. With Tesla and Grok. I don't really count Grok. It's not that it's not using AI because it is, but Tesla's really doing some cool stuff with AI like the robots. I'm assuming you saw the clip of it bouncing around on Twitter or walking. It's not walking too smoothly, but it's kind of cool.

It's a lot better than it was a couple years ago.

Yeah. And they'll iterate on it pretty quickly. But what's interesting is he's suing and he doesn't give a shit about the money. It's not about what he put in. I don't think this suit is—

I think this is the principle.

Yes.

Than anything. Yeah. And I don't think he wants his money back.

No. He wants OpenAI to keep going with its original mission.

This is a philosophical thing.

Yes. And that's what I actually think is going to make this suit much more difficult than most cases because it's not easy to settle.

He's just going to keep it going because he has the money to keep it going. Yes.

He doesn't care for the cash.

Yeah. Usually you settle because you just want it to end. He doesn't care.

He doesn't care. That's why I think it's going to affect AI.

Yeah. It's interesting. I mean, I think Tesla to me is not just a car company. It's an AI company, right? It's the robots they have going on. It's way more than that, right? Um, dude, but I don't think he's doing this to, to be anti-competitive. He's doing this because he just feels like this is the right thing to do. Yes.

But to go back to your comment on Tesla, I agree with you. I don't think Tesla is a car company. I think they're a technology company. Amazing technology in their cars. Crap cars. Forget about the speed and acceleration. A lot of electric cars have that. I know he's trying to build a car that goes 0 to 60 in 1 second. No one's done that yet. If he does it, hats off to him. But it's a crap car.

I miss my Tesla.

Dude, the seats are so uncomfortable.

I just— I'm not particular about these things. You know, like, Neil is particular about some things. I'm particular about some things. I don't care about my car so much. Like, I'm just like this, you know, you know why I liked it? I considered it a good car because the technology was good.

Yes, that's what I said. It's a technology company. But if you look at little basic things like seats, dude, we were going from Vegas to LA for one of your events last year. And I was in Mike's Tesla Model X. That's a big SUV, right?

Yeah.

With the wings?

Yeah.

The back seat, it's like an L. You can't just recline the back.

Yeah.

The bench, the part that you sit on also goes up.

You're sitting economy.

Yeah. It also goes up when you recline the back. I'm like, what the heck is this?

Yeah.

This is just so uncomfortable.

It's not a comfortable car, but like—

It is for long journeys.

It's trade-offs. You know what I mean?

No, it's an uncomfortable car for long journeys.

No, it's not a comfortable car. It's not comfortable at all.

But you're saying it's not an uncomfortable car.

No, no.

I'm saying it is an uncomfortable car.

car in general, right?

Yeah.

But my point is like, you know, the Thomas Sowell quote is, there are no solutions, only trade-offs, right? So the trade-off I'm making is like, I'm sitting in a crap seat, right? But I get all this technology and like, I can do all these things that I can't do with other cars. Like my car right now, it's electric. I like it. It's really fast and everything. Like it accelerates quickly.

More comfortable, right?

It's comfortable and it feels nice, but like I do miss the tech.

The build quality is better.

Yes.

Like the doors don't always align. They align right on a Porsche versus Teslas having issues.

But I miss the tech.

Right?

So, it's like we have different definitions and that's okay. But going back to this Elon thing, first, I was like kind of whatever, right? But it's like, no, there's stuff you can learn from people. A, some people will sue you just on the principle of things. 2, the mission of a company is very important. Some people take that very seriously. And I do agree that when you think about OpenAI, okay, yes, Microsoft took like a 50% stake, 51% or 49%?

I think it's 49%.

Okay, 49%. So, not control. But then the people they have on the board now, one guy, Brett Taylor, I believe, Ex-Salesforce CEO.

Yeah, ex-Salesforce president. I don't think he's CEO.

I think he worked at Google before as well.

Yeah, he was supposed to be the CEO of Salesforce.

Yeah, I think it's a really strong board, but it's at the end of the day, it's like, are they veering away from it? Because OpenAI has a venture arm too. I don't know if you know that.

I didn't know that.

Yeah. So there's a lot of different stuff going on right now. Maybe Elon's just trying to set it straight and say, hey guys, just focus on the mission.

Oh yeah. Marc Taylor, by the way, was the CEO of Salesforce. I think he was co-CEO with Benioff or something like that.

So yeah, that's that.

But, you know, so we've both been in lawsuits.

Mm-hmm.

And typically when you're in lawsuits in business, people, they, people just want cash. It's really simple. Like almost all lawsuits are cash-based. Give me my money and walk away. This is maybe merit, ethics-based, whatever you want to end up calling it, mission or purpose-driven. And for that reason, I see this going a very long way. I don't think he gives a crap about how, I don't know how much money he put into it, but let's call it less than $100 million.

Yeah.

He does not care for $100 million. He's made that apparent.

Yeah.

You know, when advertisers on Twitter, uh, or X said, you know, like, hey, we're pulling out, he's like, fuck you, you're gonna throw me money? He's like, I don't need it. I don't care. He's one of the world's richest people out there depending on the price of Tesla for the day.

Here's the other— the flip side of it is, okay, well, also Microsoft and OpenAI have a big war chest, and Sam's also pretty well off too.

For sure. I don't think it's a money thing because Forget net worth. Microsoft spits off so much EBITDA on an annual basis that they have, in essence, unlimited money. But the problem isn't cash. Elon has enough cash. Microsoft has enough cash. It's not like this lawsuit is going to cost them $10 billion or even $5 billion or anything like that. Legal fees can be expensive, but they're nowhere near there.

Yeah.

You know, maybe they each spend millions of dollars, maybe well into the millions, but I doubt it even gets to 50 million or 100. That's just too high. Well, that's it for this episode. If you want to attend our in-person event, go to marketingschool.io/agency. Agency.