Founders vs CEO: What’s the Difference?

0:00Do you know the difference between a founder and a CEO? No, basically there's a big difference between founder versus CEO. So Jason Fried of 37 Signals fame, he's arguing that it shouldn't be the case. So founder and CEO is a pretty common title. This is with Jason Fried the same. And he argues that founder versus CEO is completely different because a founder is someone that actually injects risk into a company, right? The founder is usually coming up with new ideas. We should buy this company. We should come up with this new product line this and that he argues that a ceo is a stabilizer a ceo is not necessarily trying to inject a lot of risk into the company right and he's saying this is why there's a problem with founder and ceo being in tech because like they're two different things you should just be one or the other and i thought that was an interesting perspective and we should talk about what we think about it i literally had this conversation or a conversation that mimics this with my ceo call it less than 10 hours ago.

0:57Wait, you're a co-founder CEO or you're CEO CEO? Co-founder is no longer a CEO. He hasn't been for ages. So our actual hired gun CEO who came from Dentsu Aegis. And I was telling him, I'm like, we should buy a China shop. And he's just like... He means a China agency, guys. Correct. So agency, we call them shops or slang for agency. We're like, we should buy a China shop. and he's like no we don't need to buy an agency in china i was like why not it's the second biggest market he's like we already have a good partnership and i was like yeah but it's not the same as one he's like neil he's like usually you know you do whatever you want and i'll tell you like do go for it but he's just like at every holding company he's like you can google articles there's been governments the government in china has stepped in to these agencies and there's been a lot of fraud or money issues or scams.

1:55And I was like, well, we try to find a reputable one and use like Ernst & Young. He's like, Neil, there's been a lot of cases where you're getting people from these auditing companies being involved and holding companies, which are the big ad agencies that just keep buying more and more, losing their shirts, just buying them because of fraud. Even if they're using like their Ernst & Young's or the PWCs or whoever it may be and amazing lawyers. He's like, we don't need this risk. And then he starts sending me links to articles. And he's just like, look at all these examples of just people losing their shirt in China.

2:29He's like, it is a big market. We don't need the risk right now. He's like, let's spend our money in all these other markets that we still want to spend money in where there's tons of opportunities and very little risk. And he's giving me an example of like Japan. He's like, we still need to spend more money in Japan. I was like, yeah, we can do both. He's like, the thing with Japan is, he's like, you're less likely to have risk and fraud. I was like, why? He's like, the Japanese really believe in honor. And he's not saying that the Chinese don't. But culturally, he's saying that they want their business to keep growing and growing.

3:01Well, a lot of the agencies in China, this is just from experience. We're not trying to generalize the Chinese population or the Japanese population. He's like, they figured out backdoor ways with accounting to inflate the numbers. And they end up pulling a rug over a lot of the sellers and they walk away with a ton of cash. All right. So I wanted to take a second to tell you about the agency owners association. So this is a agency peer group ran by my podcast co-host Neil Patel and myself, Eric Su. And these were nine and eight figure agency owners respectively. And what I will say is at the end of the day, you want to learn from people that have been there, done that.

3:36If you want to grow your agency to seven figures, eight figures and beyond, this is the group for you. And we bring in other agency owners to speak as well. And it's a great peer group where you can help each other out. And you're going to learn how to acquire more clients. You're going to learn how to take yourself out of the day to day and to build the business of your dreams. And the cool thing till November 30th, we are holding a special price and you can apply at marketing school, the aisle slash agency. And the great thing about it as well, if you try to get into group, there's a seven day free trial, right?

4:02So once November 30th hits, we're going to increase the price by$200 per month. So right now you're getting it at the lowest price possible. So go to marketing school, the aisle slash agency to learn more, and we'll see you inside. So the point of us saying this, by the way, is this is a classic example where the founder wants to inject risk right and i love injecting risk myself this is why i love playing poker right um but you do need like a stabilizer which i think mike on your end is a very good stabilizer and in this sense you know sometimes you have interactions where you might win sometimes you know it's not you're trying to win like like sometimes he'll win the debate right and sometimes you win yeah and anyone and and he wasn't trying to say there's a problem with chinese people he's just saying culturally this is what's happening with companies that are sold in China.

4:43There's a lot of amazing talent from China and it's a great place. It's just more so you got to deal with these issues. And as an entrepreneur, I just look at second biggest GDP, money to be made. Let's double down in China. Yeah. So I have a couple of words to say about that. But again, this kind of reinforces the point. Maybe founder and CEO should be different and it shouldn't be like an ego thing. Like in Silicon Valley, it's like, oh, I'm the founder and the CEO. It's like, no, they're very different. And by the way, both of us, neither of us care about the title. I would prefer not to have a CEO title.

5:13It's just what it is right now. Um, but you know, I would prefer to be the one that's injecting risk into the company other, cause if you don't inject risk, risk equals reward at the end of the day, right? If you keep letting things be the status quo, things will start to slow down. And then eventually the company, like what happens after the founder leaves all the time, company starts to slow down. I mean, okay, fine. Yes. Microsoft. Yes. Okay. Apple. Right. But how many of those are there? Like for the most part, generally the company starts to slow down. You Yeah, and also a lot of founders believe the CEO title is like very noteworthy or has a lot of notoriety, not noteworthy, a lot of notoriety.

5:48So they want to be that CEO. Yeah, in the beginning, in your 20s, maybe you want that. But then you realize, nope, we'd rather not have it. So, yeah, because there's a lot of work to do with it. My brother-in-law recently sold his company to Dropbox, and he was the CEO of every single company. And him and I were talking, you know, Eric knows him. we were talking like a week ago and we were, I was talking like, would you ever do a startup again in your life? And, you know, he didn't say yes or no. He's just like, I'm happy here at Dropbox, but he's just like, overall, if I was to do it again, I wouldn't be the CEO.

6:21I was like, really? You know, I would expect him to be a CEO cause he's always been, he's like, no, I don't want to be the CEO anymore. Yeah. It's pain. It's, it's a lot of pain. Yeah. It's, um, I, I envy your role where it's a lot of focus on strategy MNA and just driving traffic. It's great. It's like, that's a great role. Like, just go let me be a marketer and the visionary for the company. With no direct reports. Yes, with no direct reports. The best, right? Dharmesh and Neil do this well. It must be an Indian person thing. I haven't learned that yet, but that is it for today. Again, from Frankfurt, Germany, this is Marketing School, and don't forget to rate, rate, rate, subscribe, and go to marketingschool.io slash agency if you want to join the Agency Owners Association, and we'll see you tomorrow.

7:05Thank you.