Eric Siu recently hired a Chief of Staff, a role he describes as a "smokejumper" who handles special projects and relieves the CEO's workload. The position extends the CEO's thinking, creates a team for special projects, and builds skills through exposure to leadership decisions. Neil Patel cautions that smaller companies may not need one.
So today we're going to talk about the powerhouse role that is growing in popularity. Do you know what the powerhouse role is, Neil? Of course you don't. Let me tell you what it is.
Do not.
So I've been talking about it. I have a strong sense you're going to hire once I drop more stuff on you and I keep bugging you about it.
So— Wait, let me guess. Can I guess?
Yes.
Chief of staff.
That's it.
That's it.
Because you always bug me like, you need a chief of staff.
Yeah, well, I don't— I'm bugging you right now, but I am getting more and more convinced. I'll probably in 3 months or so, If it continues on this way, I'll be like, "Dude, dude, dude! Look at all the things we did." Blah blah blah. And you'd be like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah." And so I started telling Sayed and Yaniv about it, our mutual friends.
And they're like, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. We got a chief of staff too, right?" And Sayed's like, "Yeah, get me a chief of staff.
Help me, help me." And then so let me rewind a second. So I one of my favorite CEO books is this book called *The Great CEO Within*, and it's written by this guy Matt Mushari. I think I'm pronouncing it correctly. So he coached Naval Ravikant, he coached Sam Altman, right? So the CEO of OpenAI, right? So he coached some badasses and he's a VC now. He doesn't really need to work at all and he just coaches 'cause he likes it, right?
And so, you know, Neil used to be like, if you're so good as a coach, then why are you a coach?
Well, some people just like it, right? So anyway, this Matt guy—
I still believe in that. If you're so well off, you know, why are you charging people for coaching? And if you want a coach, be a mentor or a coach and do it for free if you're really that well off.
I don't know if he charges. I'm not sure. But anyway, going back to Matt for a second. So, the book Great CEO Within is awesome. And he says this thing where, I'm not going to work with you, so I'm not going to coach you. Like, I'm sure he gets a lot of requests for coaching, right? And I'm not going to coach you unless you work with the chief of staff. I was like, that's a pretty big requirement. And so, I started digging in more into it. And if you Google Matt Mochary chief of staff, You'll see a write-up. There's like a Google Doc on why you need a chief of staff, right? And the whole thing is this: a chief of staff is someone that's basically a smokejumper. And what I mean by that is someone that you can put into any situation, like special situations, right? And usually what you would do is you would hire someone for like management consulting because they have that strong background. They have a structured background. They have that training, right? And they can jump into any situation. They know how to you know create financial modeling and all that too. And so. I was like, okay, that sounds good. And so, but I didn't do anything with it for a couple years. And then recently, you know, hired a chief of staff. I looked for someone more junior that I thought had super high potential and seemed super entrepreneurial to me because the chief of staff is someone that you eventually want to put into like running a department or running a business unit, right? And I saw someone that had high upside. So I'm like, you know, I'm going to go ahead and gamble here. And that's what we did. And so far, this person just tackling everything that I throw at her and coming with me, coming at me with more ideas. And I'm just like, man, this is good 'cause it feels like such a lift off my shoulders. And it's not an executive assistant. I'll just put it to you that way. I used to think it was a glorified executive assistant. You can do that, but you're not gonna get the most upside there. I just highly recommend that you go read the Matt Mochary document on chief of staffs and then you'll figure out how to do it. And there's actually a firm that helps you get 'em. Well, what made you decide?
All right, so I will go and read it, but I don't want to read it. What are the main things? What are the main reasons why someone needs to actually hire? Like if you had to give like the top 3 reasons.
So to me, it's— so one, it's an extension of yourself. So imagine you had a mini Neil Patel with you, right? So a mini Neil Patel that has super high upside, that's very trainable, that's super open-minded, that will bring new ideas to you, right? So number one, it's a mirror version of yourself, right? 2, this person, if this role works out, you would create chiefs of— eventually, they're going to move on to another role, but you want to keep the chief of staff role going. And so, you'll have a squad of chief of staff, right? This almost becomes like your business ops team where they go in and they tackle special projects, right? And younger you and I would be like, oh, there's special projects all the time, right? These are the people that can tackle it without you needing to tell them what to do all the time. So, that's the second thing, right? And then the third thing I think ultimately is this kind of ties in with number one, but you're creating leverage. Like, here's the thing. The chief of staff, they're with me in almost every single meeting. They see everything that I do. They see every decision that I make. And it was a little risky in the beginning. I was like, okay, this person's a little— like they're going to see everything. They're going to see all my numbers. They're going to see the tough conversations I have with people. But in the 2 or 3 months or whatever since it's been, it's like, They're like, I— they're seeing the pattern recognition with how I do things and they're doing it with their own spin, but kind of my way. And I think that's super valuable.
Look, all right, maybe it's worth hiring a chief of staff. I still won't do it. But in 3 months, if you tell me that you're getting amazing results from it, I may be a little bit more open to it. But what I look at is a lot that you're describing. I don't want like a mini me. I want someone who's better than me at the stuff I suck at. And that's, you just hire people who are really, you know, good at filling in the gaps. But it also could be that my company's too small and we don't need a chief of staff. Maybe when we get to like double, triple, quadruple the size, maybe I'll need one then.
Yeah. The, and also the reason I bring this topic up right now is because we're seeing more and more talk about this on Twitter. For example, you see a lot of CEOs talking about like the chief of staff Right? So it's becoming more popular now. I used to ignore it until I was like, you know, I'm just gonna give it a shot, right? So in 3 months or so, we might come back to this and Neil might say, hey, like, how's that going right now? I might say, hey, didn't work out, I had to move on, right? Or I might say, oh my God, I need more, right? So we'll see. Anyway, that's it for today. Please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe.
One actual thing is, before we go, keep in mind Eric is a CEO of a company. I'm not. Maybe if you're like in a managing role, like a CEO or something like that, a chief of staff may be much more valuable than someone like me who's not in a day-to-day managing role.
That is a very good point. All right, everyone, please don't forget to rate, review, subscribe, and we'll see you tomorrow.
