Founders Who Built $8 Billion Companies – The CEO Should Be in Everything

Remember I told you about that, the guy that founded $8 billion companies? So 8 separate billion-dollar companies, Brad Jacobs?

That's the Waste Management guy, right?

Yeah. So he's done like 8 different things and—

He tends to acquire the companies.

Yeah, he tends to buy and like he tends to give a lot of equity and hire like an amazing management team and then he kind of just moves on to the next thing. But it was interesting because I was listening to a podcast he was on and he said that the CEO should be in everything. Like there, Like basically kind of what we talked about, like the fact that you think you can just hire a CEO and then just let them do their thing is not the reality because they're not going to have the same vision that you have, right? And ultimately it's got to be you in the deep— the more details you're involved. For example, for you, okay, you might not be managing people, but you're in finance, okay? You're in sales for the big deals.

But I don't go to the meetings. Like they had a meeting in Chicago and one in Europe where they're going all the finances.

Okay, get my point here, right? So, okay, Okay, we— when we talk on this podcast, it's like, okay, you're mostly involved with like, you know, driving traffic or strategy stuff or like, you know, that type of stuff, right? But there's a lot more that goes into it. Okay, you're going to tell me you're not involved with finance? You're not going to tell me—

No, no, I am. I just don't— I don't get involved in everything. And what I mean by that is I won't go to all the meetings, but even with finance, they had their meetings and I'll get the recap and I'll tell them what I want changed or adjusted or what I think is off.

Yeah.

But I don't have the time to go fly all the way to Europe to just meet with each country lead and be like, all right, what's the budgeting for next year?

So watch, you're okay. So we talk, you're involved with strategy, you're involved with like, you know, driving traffic, right? What else are you involved with? Just very high level.

I'm involved in anything that I'm involved with most things. I was, I did a client pitch earlier this week. Uh-huh. I follow up with the sales team to see if they followed up on what the client thought.

Yeah.

I didn't get the answer, so I texted the potential client directly.

Wow. Okay. I bet your team loved that.

I screenshotted it. I'm like, they love the presentation. I'm like, here you go.

No joke.

I just did it myself. I'm involved with 2026 revenue forecasting. I don't forecast. I just question their forecasts and try to understand what their logic is.

Yep.

2026 profitability. So finance, I'm involved with reviewing M&A deals. I'm involved with product launches. Today I just tested the new version of Answer the Public. Technically I've been testing it every week, but like I screenshot a lot of bugs and send it to my team on WhatsApp.

Product user testing, CRO on your website.

If I get a customer complaint, I follow up with my team on what's happening. Like I got a customer complaint the other day from someone who's paying our India team. And they're asking for all this stuff. I added in the person who runs India and she sent it to the team. I followed up if they're happy. And she was just like, Neil, this was closed before I was in here. They're paying us only a few hundred dollars a month and they're expecting all this stuff, which by the way, is not profitable.

Yeah.

And then I followed up with them and they said they're happier now and look at all the results. Although it costs us a lot of money. When I say costs us, we made way less revenue than what we spent. But at the end of the day, is that the client's fault? No, that's our fault.

So then I have to fix this stuff. Okay, you got product stuff, you got customer success stuff, you got sales stuff as well. You got finance stuff too. You got, what else you got? We're talking M&A stuff too, okay?

Yeah.

Projections, what else do you have?

Overall brand.

Okay.

Like the client example I gave is you can't just fire the client, that's our fault. You still got to make sure people are happy because if people aren't happy, what's going to happen?

Reputation.

Your reputation is going to be screwed, right? Content. I'm going to go film content later today.

We're literally filming content right now. He's going to go film content later. You got to do a webinar every 2 weeks as well. Okay, got to fly around speaking at conferences, networking. Networking.

I'm going to dinner today to meet a lot of entrepreneurs who are successful. Build up more relationships. Do I want to do it?

No. Face of the company, right? So my point of saying all this is that there's a lot more— like, it's very nice to say, oh, you can delegate all these things, but the reality is, even though you have other people responsible, you're still jumping around. And I'm doing the same thing too. And do we necessarily like jumping around? I don't know. Like, I've been— like, my CEO told me, you're like a fruit fly. You're like, you just keep like hovering around.

Dude, that's a great analogy.

I'm like, yeah, I totally do hover around. I was like, I was like, you know, I told her yesterday, I was like, you know, I would like to be a fruit fly that hovers around the bigger poop, not the small poop. You know what I mean? Like, you just get to bigger and bigger poop as you go on. It's just like the different, like Honda Civic, and then you go to like a Toyota Camry, you just get higher, like bigger problems, right? So yeah, absolutely we're fruit flies.

Well, at least I am. Technically you want smaller and smaller poop.

I want big poop.

No, because I know what you're saying, but the Mercedes-Benz, thank you. The Mercedes-Benz is not a bigger poop, it's a smaller poop. The Honda Civic is a bigger poop.

Okay, fine.

Yeah, that's true. That's true. You just have to reverse it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Smaller pieces of people over time.

But my point is like, like, do you agree with what Brad is saying here? Yeah, the CEO should be involved in everything, right? It's, it's like you're— okay, maybe that's the wrong way. The founder should be involved in everything.

So I think about Amplitude. They launched a free tool. You and I both tested it. At nighttime, I was sending my team screenshots of it and breaking down what they do better than us and what we do better than them and what we, where we need to improve. Right. And a lot of us were messing. This wasn't like at, you know, 3:00 PM in the day. This was like at 6:00, 7:00 PM my time. For some of my other team members, it was like 11:00 PM.

Who's going to do it if you don't do it?

Oh yeah. They're all messaging us back and forth. Like even for them when it was like 11:00 PM, they're still messaging back and forth. When he says the founder or CEO, whatever you want to call it, should be involved in everything. They shouldn't because it should run without their involvement in everything, but it's more so they have to or else it doesn't work well or grow well.

Yes. It's not like we want to, but we have to.

Yes.

That's a better way to put it. Yeah. Okay.

Because I don't want to. Do you want to?

No, no. It like, I don't want to be a fruit fly, but I kind of enjoy being a fruit fly sometimes.

Yeah. Sometimes it is fun.

Yeah.

But I just look at it overall as—

It does drive chaos with the team too. Like when we're just hovering around, sometimes when we hover around too much, it's like it does drive chaos. And I get it. But at the same time, it's a trade-off. Like our greatest strength is also our greatest weakness too, right? If someone is over-involved with everything, they also sometimes can, right, that can cause more problems too. So, okay, last thing I'll say here on this. So Brian Halligan tweeted this. So basically this is the Jensen Huang—

Wait, but before you get into that, can we go back to one thing?

Yeah.

Do you guys do company all-hand meetings? Are you leading them?

Yeah.

Oh, okay. So you're involved in that.

Like, well, I'm like leading with the first 5 minutes of the story. Like I have to make a video on Friday saying, okay, here's how we're trending towards a vision. Here's what we're doing. Here's what we're changing. Here's the things I need to do better. Here's this, right? And then, so I need to be motivational on Fridays, like a coach, right? And then when I appear at all hands, sometimes I'm a coach, sometimes I'm a, hey, we need to do this better type of thing. Do I want to do that? No.

Yeah.

And some of my teams watches this too. No. So yeah.

We just had an all-hands meeting today at 9:30 AM.

Uh-huh. And— oh, this is not your thing.

No, I learned about it. I think it was yesterday, 'cause my CEO was telling me how he's like creating a deck or something for the all-hands.

I didn't even know we had all-hands.

So then my co-founder Mike, my CEO's also named Mike, but my co-founder Mike's like, hey, you joining the all-hands? It's starting 9:30. Here's the link if you're not or if you want to. And then I'm like, I got a podcast from 9:30 to 10:30. I was able to make the podcast shorter, so I ended the podcast, call it like 10:08. So then I joined the all-hands for 10 minutes, showed my face, but I already know what they're going to cover. I looked at the all-hands. I think they do different ones for different regions because it's just time zone. But when I joined, maybe 380-something people, so I'm estimating here, but maybe roughly 30% of our staff were on it.

Yeah.

Right?

And you have, it's global, so you don't have everyone in the world on, obviously.

Yeah, it's too hard because it's middle of the night for certain people. But yeah, when I look at that, like that's some of the stuff that I'm not involved in. And there's countless examples of that in my organization where like, I'm not involved in every sales training, but I am involved in all divisions. I'm just not involved in Every single meeting or every little minute detail.

And your problem set changes over time as you continue to scale, right? Obviously. The thing I would say, what I learned is as much as I don't think you're a fan of like, you know, I'll just speak for myself, like having to do the all-hands, right? Like communicate the message and repeat the message.

No, that's not me.

You know why I'm not a fan of it? It's because I live with myself all the time. So I know what the message is in my head, right? But people don't know what the message is. And What I learned from my team, like I heard this last year, is like, hey, we could really use more of those videos from you in the all-hands because we want to hear from you because we don't know what you know. And because they're like, you see the entire battlefield. And I'm like, okay, that's fair. So I do it, I appear and, you know, I try to communicate stories because stories, they blow over well, right? Meaning that people absorb it more.

Yeah.

So I don't know what you say on those calls, but that's my positioning now. And I think it does help. And I find that The best messages need to be repeated over time because people forget. Yeah.

Yeah.

So how do you do it when you appeared for 5, 10 minutes?

Hey guys. No, I didn't say anything. You didn't?

You just showed your face.

Because people were presenting. So when we do our all-hands, there's a deck. People make their versions of the slide. It all gets compiled together and people present their part.

I bet you people would like to hear from you.

Yeah, I agree with you.

You're just not going to do it? I think you should do it.

No, I could do it. I just didn't know.

Yeah.

Until last, I was, when I was driving to LA, so call it like around 3 o'clock is when I found out there was all hands today. And then when I found out the time today and I was given the invite, I already had something that was scheduled a week ago for a podcast interview and I already changed it on them once. So I don't want to be the prick that changes on them twice.

Yeah.

Right. So then I was just like, but I did compromise. I got them to do a 30-minute podcast instead of an hour. And I didn't tell them, hey, we need to end this earlier. I just controlled the podcast pace. I know you know how to do this really well too, because we've done it so often where we can make it end because there's not much more to talk about.

Yeah.

Because we can pick the talk tracks and the subjects and just make it so we have extra time or we can make it drag out. And I chose to make it end earlier so then that way I could go to the all-hands, show my face, People were talking. I didn't want to be the prick that interrupts them when they get to share the highlights of their departments or their accomplishments or their team's accomplishments. So I didn't want to interrupt, but I showed up for a little bit and I'll get the summary from either my co-founder, a few other people on the team, or the CEO. But yeah, you're right. What makes me really feel like a prick, I was in Dallas for For the HighLevel event.

Yeah.

So when I was there, 2 people came up, they're high. They're like, oh, what's up? I was like, hey, what's your name? And they're like, oh, I'm so-and-so. I'm like, oh cool, what do you do? And they're like, I work for you. And I was like, oh cool. I felt really bad then. And then I was like, oh, how long? One was like 4 years. The other one I think was 2 years. Other people were also hitting me up, had to take some pictures. They came back to take pictures. Other people were trying to take pictures. So I was there for around an hour answering people's questions. Then I went around the conference to go try to find them, to try to get them coffee or something before my flight. I could not find them. I just felt like a piece of crap.

Yeah.

Because I should try to know everyone in my company, but it's really hard at our scale, right? The moment you hit, I don't know what the number is, we're 1,000 plus, call it, but The moment you hit, I don't know, maybe like 400 or 500 and your teams are spread all over and you have different divisions, maybe it starts getting harder, but 1,000+ for sure, I think it's really hard to know everyone on a first name basis.

No, Dunbar's number, you can really only know 150 people at a time.

Is that what it is?

Yeah.

But I just felt really bad and I'm like, okay, I need to go hang out with these people, buy 'em coffee and get to know 'em more.

You know what I remember?

And apologize.

Maybe this will motivate you to do the like 5, 10-minute spiel each time you appear. you appear in all hands. When I worked for Wpromote, this is like 16, 17 years ago, whenever we did an all hands each month, the CEO would speak and like everyone was listening intently 'cause we wanted to know where we were going. And now I'm just recalling this now as I'm thinking about it, 'cause when my team told me this, I didn't think about, I didn't connect these 2 moments. I'm like, yeah, they do want to hear. And they like, even though you're not the CEO, technically you are the leader of the company, right? Not tech, you are the leader of the company.

Yeah.

And so I think when they hear where we're going, where they're going, it motivates them, it excites them. And imagine all the other goodwill it creates. Other people talk about it, maybe they'll tell other people to join. So I think that that 5, 10 minutes goes a long way. If you do it.

That's not the issue. I don't ever know when we have an offhand.

That's your fault.

That is my fault. And I think I know the reason. It's not like anyone's trying to cut me off. I'm the only one not on Microsoft.

That's also your fault.

Yeah. So we have like Outlook. I still use Gmail and I don't want to switch. So I don't have a corporate email address.

I think this 5 minutes spent every month will make you more money. How about that?

Or all hands are not monthly.

Oh, how often?

Global all hands are maybe a few times a year max.

Oh dude, even better ROI.

Yeah, I know, but they probably forget to tell me because I bet you what ends up happening is an email just goes out saying it's an all hands to everyone on the corporate email. Now technically my domain's owned by the company, so I am on a corporate email, but I'm on Gmail when everyone else— when I mean everyone else, literally everyone else is on Outlook. And there's a few people who have Gmail as well, but they have Gmail and Outlook. For me, I'm just on Gmail.

Guys, this is a Neil problem. You know who said this? This person said the storyteller is the most powerful person in the room.

Who said this? I don't know.

Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs. So I think when you do it, you can report back on how well it's worked because they, Um, they continue to want me to do it even though I ask if I can stop doing it. They continue to ask me to do it. So anyway, I, I want to give one more thing here. So if you're in B2B, here's the deal. LinkedIn account-based marketing sucks, but it doesn't have to with Carrot. It allows you to create personalized ads towards your customers and also personalized landing pages that align with the ads. So you're going to have higher conversions and influence pipeline reporting to prove that your ABM works. So if you want to learn more, just Just go to karrot.ai and you can join the waitlist. Again, it's karrot.ai and we'll see you on the other side. Did you know that Jensen Huang, the Nvidia CEO's trifecta, his success trifecta, his management style trifecta, you want to know what it is?

Go for it. I know quite a bit about his management style already though.

Okay, these you probably know already, but one, most people don't know this. He doesn't do any one-on-ones with his staff, okay? Because they're already like high level, like they're all SVPs, VPs, right? He has 60 direct reports, so he doesn't believe in having a management layer. And the one that I like the most that people on my team for sure don't like is the criticize publicly trifecta. So this is known as, sure, you praise publicly, but you also criticize publicly as well. And it's actually worked out well. And I would say that he actually has another thing that he does. Maybe we'll call this, I don't know if it's trifecta, a fourfecta, whatever, right? Quadfecta.

Yeah.

But I like what he does around the day, I think it's a daily top 5. So basically you just talk about what you're working on, but at the end of it you talk about what trends are interesting to you. So it was like 10, 15 years ago when he noticed that a lot of people kept talking about machine learning and deep learning, and at that point he knew that they had to get into AI, and that's how they're able to do that.

And so— Cool.

We have a function of that, but Brian Halligan, former HubSpot CEO, he said, despite Jensen's astronomical success, I don't see a lot of CEOs borrowing his plays. So specifically the 60 direct reports, No one-on-ones and criticize publicly trifecta.

Yeah, I think it also varies per company and I'm not saying that's the right way or wrong way. I think you just got to find your own style. And I'll give you another example. When I met up with my buddy, as I mentioned, he works for a Fortune 100 company. They do over $100 billion a year in revenue, $100 billion. He's not a C-level, he's not the layer below, He's the layer below that. So when you have $100+ billion in revenue, when you're 2 levels lower than the CEO, that's a lot of people, right? He interacts with the CEO and the CEO interacts with a lot of people on his level. And it may not be a direct report, but he's interacting with people and sending reports to the CEO and helping with projects and other people are. That's a really hands-on CEO.

Yeah.

And I know for a fact, even though he doesn't, he may not have 60 direct reports, I don't know what the number is, he's interacting and reporting with probably 100 to 200 people in his organization at any time. And I'm like, that's hardcore.

You mean the CEO?

The CEO is.

Yeah.

Right? And I'm not saying that's the right way to run things or not run things, but even in that organization, I think they should cut 50% of their staff.

I think there's a lot to learn from that because Steve Jobs from Apple had the top 100. Usually you're going to have a top 100 to 200 people that you go to. I'm sure you have like a top 50 to 100 people that you constantly go to, right?

Not, not nowhere near 100, but we're also not as big where—

Okay, there's a top 50, top 25?

Top like 30.

Yeah, but these are the people you know you can count on, right?

Correct.

And then some people cycle out of your favor sometimes too if you're not getting things quickly enough, right?

Yes, and percentage-wise, I probably interact with my more, I have more top people than like Apple. Because if you look at 30 people, I don't have the employee base that they have. While with Apple, they may have, I don't know, 50,000, 100,000 employees. So top 100 is a very tiny percentage. And then if you look at organizations your size, you're interacting with almost everyone.

Yep. Right.

So even better than me.

No, I'm not actually. It's like there's probably, I don't know, 10 that I go to.

Oh, okay.

Yeah. But what I would say is it goes back to Dunbar's number again. So Steve Jobs, top 100, right? Jensen has 60, you have 50. It's usually like, It's 150, below 150 is the number. The guy you just mentioned, it's like 150, 200 people or whatever, right?

Yeah.

And going back to your point too, when you think about Jensen's style, oh, Elon's style, right? So we did like a planning session earlier this week. This is the first time I ever ran the Elon algorithm. So just to reinforce, it's QDSSA, QDSSA, right? So whenever you have a problem in your company, You question, then you delete, then you simplify, then you speed up, and then you automate, right?

Yeah.

We tried it, 'cause the question I asked people was like, hey, what's one stupid thing you think we're doing as a company right now, right? And people, these are all the things people are questioning. And so we started methodically going down these things, and oh my God, we started deleting so much, we started simplifying so much, we didn't even think about speeding up or automating yet, because a lot of people today, they're like, oh, AI, I want to automate everything, right? But I'm telling you, like, love or hate Elon, this algorithm does a good job. Am I saying, all the things we're talking about, yeah, how you do it, how I do it, is the right way. We're just like, no, this is just what works for us, and it's worth experimenting with things. Yes.