1 Year of Not Another CEO - David Politis - Episode #55

Welcome to Not Another CEO Podcast. I'm your host, David Politis. Every week we talk to inspiring leaders and get the true stories, the ups and downs, the lessons learned, and come away with actionable advice for our own journeys. Hello everyone. I hope everyone is enjoying their summer. Today's episode is a really important one for me. It's the one year anniversary of the first episode of Not Another CEO Podcast. A year ago, I set out on the journey to create this podcast, not knowing what it would turn into, but knowing that I really had a passion for sharing knowledge with founders, CEOs and leaders and helping them better bend the curve, bend the curve on their companies, on themselves, on their, for their teams. And I set out to find CEOs who are willing to tell their stories, to share their lessons learned, to, to be open about the challenges that they faced. And I wanted to do it differently. And that was a big thing for me. That's why I called it Not Another CEO Podcast. I wanted to do it differently. No fluff, no revisionist history, no ego, no just hey, we, we crushed this and we sold for this much. You know, I wanted it to be one generation of CEOs who've been through it, who've been in the trenches sharing with the next generation who's going through it right now. And when I started, I wasn't sure if I would find CEOs who are willing to join me as guests and actually participate in this type of a conversation. I had to beg. I pretty much begged my first set of guests to be on the show. And you fast forward a year and over a course of 52 weeks, we've interviewed 52 CEOs and published 52 episodes an episode every single week. And I've had guests on here who are first time founders and I've had people on who are five time CEOs five times exited CEOs, people who have bootstrapped their companies to massive scale to, to people who have gone the venture route and raised hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. I've recorded most of these episodes virtually, but actually about a month ago I did my first ever live recording in front of 100 person live audience. And you know, as I reflect on this, last year, it's been a really important one in my career and not another CEO has been at the center of that. And I wanted to Reflect on my 10 favorite parts of building not another CEO, my 10 favorite parts of the episodes of the guests. And so that's what I wanted to share with you today. So these are my 10 favorite parts of not another CEO, in no particular order. So we're going to start with number one, which is making it to one year and consistently delivering a new episode to the audience every single week. When I started, people said, you're going to get tired of this. You're not going to be able to do this every week. You're not going to be able to find enough guests. It was they. People told me, do it every month, don't do it every week, because once you start every week, you're going to have to keep that, that, that cadence. And we're a year in, and actually, the cadence is something that I enjoy. The frequency, the. It's accountability to me, it's accountability to the audience. And now that we've gotten into the groove of it, I love it. I mean, to be really honest, I was kind of nervous in the beginning, even though I. I interviewed many people. I've never really done it in this format to this much of an audience, and I was nervous. But I've started to really enjoy it, and I look forward to my. To my recordings. Number two is getting to interview friends or people that I've known for a really long time from when they started their companies. And I've been able to have conversations with people that I've actually never even had. And these are people I know for a while. We're very open with each other, but actually, the podcast, we had really open and transparent conversations on the episodes. And I love that. I really, I loved it. Whether it's people who I knew back in my days in Atlanta when I was starting Better Cloud and they were starting their companies at the same time, like someone like Kyle Porter from Salesloft, or whether it's people that I met when I first came back to New York to build Better Cloud, and I was meeting all the other founders who were starting at the same time, like Dan Michiel from Glia, or if it's people that I worked with while at Better Cloud who started their own companies, like Nick Freund, you know, or people I've looked up to for. For a very long time and have followed really through my whole career, literally from the beginning, like Craig Walker from Dialpad, all of those people like me, and many, many more, being able to talk to those people on the podcast and have them as guests was a big highlight for me. Number three was hearing people's family stories, people's backgrounds, people's upbringing. You know, the way the format of the show is, is the first 2/3 let's say, or 3/4 of the show is all about people, how they run their companies. But the back part of the show is all about people's backgrounds, upbringings, motivations. And I can't prep for that the way I can prep for the business part of it, because most of that stuff is not written about anywhere. And so it's a really enjoyable part of the show for me because I'm hearing the answers for the first time. I'm learning about these things for the first time, theoretically, actually, the audience, the public is learning about these things for the first time. And the stories people have, the stories people have of themselves being an immigrant or their parents or their grandparents, and the work ethic that that instilled in them and the hardships that they had to go through or their family had to go through. People's individual stories of what motivates them, the things that they did as a kid that they knew they were set up for, entrepreneurship, you know, those types of things. For me, it's really one of my favorite parts of the show. Number four, it's that moment. It's the moment when I ask people, I say, what is the biggest challenge you've ever faced and how have you overcome it? And when I ask people that question, there's this moment I could clip it probably from 25 of the episodes where people go, oh, so many, I don't even know where to start. And I think that that just that line that they say tells so much about the journey and so much about what I appreciate when these guests actually start opening up, especially about their challenges, because that's what people really don't talk about enough. And so that line, always when I ask that question, they say, oh my God, there's been so many. I just think that's so representative of the journey. Number five, the in person interviews and conversations that I've had. You know, most of what I do is virtual like this. The guests I've had are all over the country and the world. And so it's hard to do in person recordings, but I've increasingly been doing those in New York City when my guest is here. And those conversations, they're just. I think I'm better in person generally. I think it's easier to have a real, like authentic conversation in person. And so I love when I'm able to do that. I'm trying to do more and more of that. Number six is learning about new businesses and new industries, things that I didn't know anything about before I speak to that Guest. And so you know, I've had people on like Lauren Brill Brill from Sweet Laurens, a cookie company. And you know, I, I literally know nothing about that. And being able to learn through my interviews with her is amazing. Having someone like Rich Burey from Robin Hood, the nonprofit here in New York and hearing about how similar his role is to any of the other guests that I had. And tech CEOs Jennifer Zuccharini from Fleur de Mal. It's a lingerie company completely outside of my realm of expertise and amazing to hear the complexity of that type of a business with the brick and mortar and all that. So I've really enjoyed those conversations and, and, and bringing different leaders from different industries to, to the conversation. And honestly you see that it's all the same in many ways. It's all the same. Number seven, it's the feedback and the messages that we've gotten in the last year from people who listen to the podcast, you know, and people who, who, who, who read the articles that we put out there. And it's just when, when people talk about how impactful this particular segment was, they. Someone wrote me one time and said, oh my God, I needed that, I needed that to hear that other CEO talk about that problem. Cause that's what I'm facing right now. And the fact that they made it through gives me confidence that I can make it through. People have said to me, oh that one thing, I'm going to implement that thing in my company because I heard it there and it made complete sense. So when we get that kind of feedback that makes it all worth it. Honestly, that makes it all worth it. That is why I started doing this a year ago. And I love getting that emails things on my LinkedIn. I love that. Number eight is the answer to the first question that I ask everyone, every guest on the show. I ask everyone, what is the one thing you've done, big or small, at your company that's had the biggest impact and that you would absolutely do again if you're CEO of another company in the future? Those answers, that should be a book. Those answers really do tell you when you start stringing those things together. That's the operating manual for a company. And of course different people approach it different ways. So I like to hear. But there's some very common themes. Whether it comes about values or picking your co founder or selling your company or listening to your customers or finding the right ideal customer profile, there's some commonalities. And when you hear it over and over and over. It validates my own experiences, frankly. And I think that it really does give the listeners a playbook to how to run a company. Number nine, it was partnering with Nick Freund to take Not Another CEO to the next level. You know, when I started working with him a couple months ago, we launched the not another CEO substack, not another CEO.substack.com. we're at over 7,000 subscribers now, maybe, maybe even more by the time that this goes live. And we have done so much around this community and this audience that we're starting to build. And we have some really big things planned for later this year. I'm excited to announce it hopefully towards the end of the year. But this has really gone from a side project that I was working on just out of passion to something that's becoming very real and has a soul to it now and has real momentum. And that was a lot because of my work with Nick. And then number 10, this is a very personal one for me is being able to involve my kids, Noah and Sammy. They're 11 and 9 in this journey. They were old enough when I started the podcast for me to talk to them about it, to tell them what I was thinking. They're old enough to listen to the episodes and understand a good portion of them. And a real highlight was when we did the live recording with Cass and Mike Lazzaro about a month ago here in New York City in a big theater. They were there and they helped check people in, usher people to the right room and they were there to watch the whole thing. And at the very end my, my son Sammy, 9 year old, he's he. After an hour and 10 minute episode and just amazing Q A for the last question, he raised his hand and we, we, we brought him the mic and he said to Cass and Mike Lazaro who were very successful, built Buddy Media, sold it to Salesforce for $750 million. It's 9:30 at night. And he says to them, how do you define success? Because the entire time we've been talking about success and we've been talking about all of that. And it was such an amazing moment for me to see that he is hearing, listening, processing. And that was a big highlight for me and I hope that continues as they continue to be involved. Noah put together this amazing video to promote that event. He used canva and in 30 minutes created this video with music and all this stuff just to, and he, he offered to do it. He said, I, I just want to help you. I want to help you drive registrations for the event. And he went and built this crazy video. So to. To be able to experience that with them really is. That's a big highlight for me. So Those are my 10 highlights. And I just want to say thank you for all the support over the last year and for sharing recommendations for. For guests, for sharing the podcast and the content with your networks. It means a lot to me. For every email, you know, that I get, every comment on my LinkedIn, it really does mean a lot. And so I appreciate it. We appreciate it. And we've got a lot of exciting stuff coming. And, you know, we're always looking for recommendations of great CEOs, people we should interview, feedback on our content, ideas for content, if you want to contribute content. So please, please keep it coming. And I promise you, we're just getting started. Thank you so much. Enjoy the rest of your summer. That's a wrap for this week's episode of Not Another CEO Podcast. Thanks for joining. For show notes and more, please Visit not another CEOPodcast.com we'll see you next week.