A founder walks into their own company one day and realizes something unsettling:
Everyone is waiting on them.
Decisions pile up. Bottlenecks form. The thing they built to move fast… now moves at their speed.
That moment—quiet, invisible, slightly terrifying—is where this story begins.
The Founder’s Paradox: You Built It… Now You’re Slowing It Down
David Bishop has seen this movie before. Not once or twice—but across industries, decades, and technology waves.
From helping lead MGM and Sony through the rise of DVD and Blu-ray to now coaching startup CEOs, he’s lived through one recurring pattern:
Every system that scales eventually breaks its original creator.
Not because the founder isn’t capable—but because the job changes faster than the person does.
At the start, founders are the company:
Every decision flows through them
Every hire reflects them
Every product insight comes from them
It works… until it doesn’t.
The Inflection Point Nobody Prepares You For
There’s a moment—often around Series A—where things subtly shift.
You’re no longer building a product.
You’re building an organization.
And that requires a completely different skillset.
David describes it simply:
You have to get off the dance floor and into the balcony.
Translation: stop doing everything, and start seeing everything.
This is where many founders struggle:
“If I’m not in the details, am I still valuable?”
“Why isn’t everyone working as hard as me?”
“Why does this feel slower with more people?”
Because your job is no longer speed.
It’s direction.
The Founder vs. CEO Identity Crisis
Here’s the uncomfortable truth:
Great founders and great CEOs are not always the same person.
Founders thrive in chaos:
Zero to one thinking
Scrappy execution
Instinct-driven decisions
CEOs of scaled companies need:
Clarity over chaos
Systems over heroics
Delegation over control
Some founders evolve.
Some don’t.
And the cost of not evolving is steep—not just for the company, but for the team around them.
David shared a moment where he had to tell a founder directly:
You need to decide—do you want to be the founder, or the CEO?
That’s not a tactical question.
That’s identity-level.
The Hidden Bottleneck: You
Most founders think their bottleneck is:
Hiring
Product-market fit
Capital
But in reality, the biggest constraint is often… themselves.
Common patterns David sees:
Micromanaging instead of empowering
Holding onto decisions too long
Hiring people—but not trusting them
Confusing activity with impact
It’s not about working harder.
It’s about letting go of being the hero.
Leadership Isn’t About Being in Front
There’s a myth in startups:
The leader must lead from the front.
David challenges that completely.
He describes three types of leaders:
The feared leader (commands everything)
The admired leader (people follow them)
The invisible leader (people say, “we did this”)
The third one wins.
Because real leadership isn’t about visibility—it’s about multiplication.
Psychological Safety vs. Accountability (You Need Both)
Startups often swing too far in one direction:
Either: “Everyone’s ideas matter” → chaos
Or: “Just execute” → silence
The best teams do both:
Encourage ideas from everywhere
Measure outcomes rigorously
David puts it simply:
If you measure what matters, the team will tell you how you’re doing.
That balance—between openness and execution—is what unlocks performance.
The Founder’s Journey Is a Story (Literally)
If this all feels familiar, it should.
It’s the same arc as every great story.
David maps founders to the hero’s journey:
The call (start the company)
The trials (early growth, uncertainty)
The abyss (things stop working)
The transformation (you evolve)
The return (you build something meaningful)
Most founders love the beginning.
Few are prepared for the middle.
Why This Matters More Now (Hello, AI)
We’re entering another massive platform shift—AI.
And here’s the twist:
The faster the world changes, the faster leaders must evolve.
The old playbooks expire quickly:
What worked at 10 employees fails at 100 or especially 1000
What worked pre-AI won’t work post-AI
The only durable advantage?
Adaptability as a leader.
The Real Job of a Founder
By the end of the conversation, one idea stands out:
The founder’s job is not to build the company.
It’s to continuously rebuild themselves as the company grows.
Because every stage demands a different version of you:
Builder
Operator
Leader
Strategist
And eventually…
Someone who creates a system where success no longer depends on them.
Final Thought
Most founders start with a vision for a product.
Very few realize they’re also signing up for a lifelong process of personal reinvention.
And that’s the real game:
Not just scaling the company.
But scaling yourself fast enough to keep up.
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Chapters:
00:01 Introduction to David Bishop
00:29 Early Career in Music and Entertainment
01:12 Entering MGM and the Rise of Home Video
02:29 The Birth of DVD and Industry Growth
03:07 Blu-ray vs HD DVD Format War
04:24 Transition to Sony and Leading Home Entertainment
06:14 The Golden Era of Physical Media
07:13 Industry Disruption: Netflix, Redbox, and Streaming
08:12 Leaving Corporate and Finding Purpose
10:08 From Executive to Leadership Coach
11:34 Discovering Startup Founders and Innovation
12:20 The Series A Inflection Point for Founders
13:44 Founder vs CEO Identity Crisis
14:49 Inside a Leadership Coaching Engagement
15:33 The Power of 360 Feedback
17:15 Scaling Leadership with AI Tools
19:28 Transforming a Founder CEO
22:14 Lessons from Sony and Navigating Change
23:16 Understanding VUCA in Modern Business
24:32 Leading Through Platform Shifts
25:00 Coaching Startups vs Large Enterprises
26:21 Founder Leadership Patterns
27:26 The Hero’s Journey of a Founder
30:13 Building Psychological Safety and Accountability
32:12 Common Founder Blind Spots
34:43 Measuring Leadership Growth and Impact
36:11 The Evolving Role of the CEO
37:42 The Future of Leadership and AI
38:10 Coaching Executive Teams
39:03 AI as a Leadership Tool
Transcript:
Brian Bell (00:01:05): Hey everyone, welcome back to the Ignite Podcast. Today, we’re thrilled to have David Bishop on the mic. He is a sought after leadership coach for founder CEOs and leaders navigating high growth transitions. He’s former president of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. I’ve seen probably some stuff there. And the MGM Home Entertainment division is now leading the David Bishop Group, where he helps execs evolve into strategic, resilient leaders. Thanks for coming on, David.
David Bishop (00:01:28): Thanks for having me, Brian.
Brian Bell (00:01:29): I’d love to get your origin story. What’s your background?
David Bishop (00:01:32): Sure. So I ended up being president of Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, as you mentioned, but I grew up on the East Coast. I actually wanted to be in the music industry when I was coming up. So I started in a record store in Philadelphia and then transitioned into distribution for a companies like Arista and Motown. And then around that same time as I was doing that, the whole home video thing started to happen, you know, the old days of VHS and beta.
Brian Bell (00:02:07): I remember. I’m old enough to remember. I remember when you could actually get VHS tapes delivered to you out of a van. Remember that? I don’t remember that.
David Bishop (00:02:14): I don’t remember that.
Brian Bell (00:02:15): That was a thing in Seattle where I grew up. Yeah, my mom’s friend had a little delivery business and he had a bunch of, so we always had the best movies, right?
David Bishop (00:02:23): Yeah.
Brian Bell (00:02:24): Interesting.
David Bishop (00:02:24): So yeah, so around that time, all my friends from the record industry were getting picked off by the studios, which kind of made sense because it was entertainment, but packaged goods. So it was a lot of, you had to have kind of a retail centric mentality. So I ended up joining MGM as a Northeastern regional sales and marketing company manager and then worked my way up to then be vice president of sales and marketing and eventually president of that of that division and got to see you know a lot of meaningful change and growth there was a lot most of my career was sort of plateau you know the and then more growth which came in the advent of the dvd Which I was fortunate enough to be kind of one of the founding fathers, if you will, of that technology and helped launch that.
Brian Bell (00:03:17): Yeah, I forget the technological history there, but Sony invented the DVD?
David Bishop (00:03:21): No, actually it was driven by Warner Brothers and Toshiba.
Brian Bell (00:03:27): yeah sony had their competed their own competing like sony does their own proprietary competing technology that didn’t quite eventually eventually there was
David Bishop (00:03:34): a notion actually i was at the very forefront of the launch of blu-ray which in and that that was kind of a battle of formats because there was an another version dvd
Brian Bell (00:03:47): was the other one at the time exactly i used to work at the good guys that’s uh my claim to yeah so like i’m so you were in high school i was one of the only high schoolers ever hired at 17 years old and they flew me down to california and trained me and oh wow so i worked in mostly car stereo but also like home stereo as well yeah so at any rate so i you
David Bishop (00:04:08): know i got to kind of live live through that that growth and i was i was with uh mgm a fair amount of time i think maybe maybe 15 years or Or more eventually took over consumer products for them. In addition to home entertainment, ran international theatrical marketing and distribution as well. Then private equity came in and bought MGM, which happens fairly regularly.
Brian Bell (00:04:34): Yeah, in the media industry. Yeah, definitely.
David Bishop (00:04:36): MGM gets bought and resold. And I think they probably have a permanent home now with Amazon. But at any rate, when that happened, they put distribution under Sony. So I was invited to come in to Sony Pictures and eventually run their home entertainment division. That’s where we launched Blu-ray because that was a Sony...
Brian Bell (00:04:58): That was a Sony format, right?
David Bishop (00:04:59): Yeah, that was a Sony format. Sony tech.
Brian Bell (00:05:01): So they finally won. They missed it with CDs.
David Bishop (00:05:04): Yeah.
Brian Bell (00:05:04): They missed it with the mini disc. They missed it with DVDs, but they finally got it right with.
David Bishop (00:05:10): Yeah. Well, I’m not sure if they completely got it right because, you know, a lot of people were looking at that as a replacement format for for DVD, which it. It was definitely an enhancement over DVD. It made the experience richer and still now with, you know, 4K versions of that. It’s still, yeah, it’s still out there. It’s still a great experience, but not the commodity that it was with DVD.
Brian Bell (00:05:35): I kind of missed drive to the movie store. Yeah. You know, browse all the things and you didn’t have an opinion because you didn’t have the internet like in your pocket back in 2000, 2001. And so you kind of had to just read the cover. Okay. I like that actor. I heard about this. Ask the movie store clerk. And then, you know, like that’s a whole hour ordeal, by the way, you know, going down to the movie store, selecting a movie, coming, it’s like an event. And then you come back and you’re like, I’m watching this. I don’t care if it’s bad. I’ve committed to watching. I kind of miss that experience of driving or watching.
David Bishop (00:06:06): It was an exploration and it had its benefits as you’re describing that it could open you up to to more things than you intended to go to the store with. But there’s also a frustration element that if you wanted to go in for a particular movie, it’s probably not going to be there if it’s really popular.
Brian Bell (00:06:24): Right. Yeah. If it’s a hot new release, you got to get there before five o’clock basically. Yeah, exactly. I remember all that. That was fun.
David Bishop (00:06:31): And then what happened? As things started to progress, there was another plateau, which ended up being the industry was getting disrupted. So it was built around really a purchase mentality that You know, people were buying and collecting DVDs. When the recession hit in 2008 or 2009, that’s when people started to look for lower priced options out there. And you had things like Redbox come on the scene and Netflix come on the scene where you could... have a subscription and get movies delivered to your home. And at a rental price, streaming compounded the disruption there. So we ended up moving from, at the studio, most home entertainment divisions were worth about 50, 55% of the revenues and profits for the whole studio. And that quickly became 25%. And So then the job ended up being from moving from this kind of growth plateau, growth plateau scenario that I described to just, you know, taking apart the things that me and others like me built. Eventually, it reached a point where I was in a position where I could say.
Brian Bell (00:07:53): Golden handcuffs. Yeah. Give me the golden parachute. Get me out of here. Yeah. Yeah.
David Bishop (00:07:57): And so I did. And then, you know, when I was figuring out what to do with the next chapter, you know, I started consulting for a little bit and I did about a year and a half at IMAX. But what I found was the real passion that I had about my work was building high performing teams. So I started to think about, you know, how can I do that in this In this chapter. And so I ended up back at school, back at Columbia University, where I got a graduate certificate in leadership and organizational development.
Brian Bell (00:08:35): And then I must have been really interesting for you because you have. I mean, you’ve lived and breathed it. You probably could have got up in front of class and taught the course. What was it like kind of learning it in a structured way that stuff you’d already been doing for decades?
David Bishop (00:08:47): Yeah, in a way. But the difference is it’s a meaningful difference to go from, you know, leading a division or leading a company. And, you know, I always had an approach that was built around active listening. I kind of framed it as I’m really here to harvest new ideas, not to be the center of all ideas. all ideas. But that’s a whole different skill set than getting the best out of the CEO founder in this case, because it’s not something where you make a decision at the end of the day, right? Or tell someone, okay, I heard this, heard that, this is where we’re going. Or it is, it’s almost counseling in a way because you’re there to probe, you’re there to ask deep questions. You’re there for people to arrive at the solutions themselves and get to the point where they’re making meaningful behavioral changes that can cascade down to the whole organization.
Brian Bell (00:09:42): At Microsoft, we call that leader as coach. And so a lot of the management philosophy and training, and we had 150 hours a year at Microsoft and like leadership training, management training. So three hours a week, roughly. There’s a lot of our time just going through courses, going to off sites. And I remember the leader as coach is a framework there, which is exactly what you’re describing. I’m not here to tell you what to do. To be a sounding board, kind of like a coach would be of a basketball team or a football team. Yeah, exactly. Although I guess on a football team, they kind of call the plays, but anyway.
David Bishop (00:10:15): Yeah. So at any rate, I launched the practice thinking, okay, I’m going to be the coach for the media industry, but found that it was way more interesting leaning into CEO founders and their journey. And I think what sparked my enthusiasm around that when we were being disrupted, I wanted to make sure that we weren’t acting like the music industry when they had a shift in the way people were consuming their content, right? They tried to fight against it. So I tried to create an organization that was more on the balls of their feet, that were more innovative, leaning into the change. And so I would actually invite people from Silicon Beach at this point to kind of have my senior team meet with them.
Brian Bell (00:11:03): Silicon Beach is Santa Monica, Malibu area, right?
David Bishop (00:11:05): Yeah.
Brian Bell (00:11:06): Yeah. Just for listeners who are like, what’s Silicon Valley?
David Bishop (00:11:08): Yeah, yeah, yeah. What is that? So when I found that these were just really people who are rooted in innovation and problem solving and looking for the next great thing, that really tapped into something for me. So I wanted to help them on their journey because I took... you know, organizations from, from 30 to 30 to 3000. And I know that changes you have to make in the organization and the changes you have to make in yourself, right. At those various stages.
Brian Bell (00:11:38): Yeah. So it sounds like you like, kind of you’ll get involved as early as call it a series, a kind of startup. You’re starting to kind of scale the organization. You’re starting to kind of run into like limits. Like you don’t know everything that’s going on anymore.
David Bishop (00:11:51): Yeah.
Brian Bell (00:11:52): And now you have to adapt to your leadership style.
David Bishop (00:11:53): Exactly. That’s the perfect inflection point. It hits around series A and you go from being the center of the universe, rightfully.
Brian Bell (00:12:02): Everything flows through you.
David Bishop (00:12:04): Everything flows through you. And I find through my work that there’s some pain involved in that CEO founder making that transition. And some of them get lost and some of them like, aren’t I valuable anymore? And so it’s hard for them to kind of make that shift.
Brian Bell (00:12:21): And some founders don’t want to make that shift, I find, right?
David Bishop (00:12:23): Yeah.
Brian Bell (00:12:24): That’s where a lot of founders, I see a lot kind of higher professional CEOs around that series A or B because they got the company to five or 10 million of ARR. And now the company is an operating company. It’s a going concern with, you know, different kind of needs. And a lot of founders who’d like to go zero to one or zero to 10 just don’t like that anymore.
David Bishop (00:12:42): Yep.
Brian Bell (00:12:43): Exactly. One being one million of ARR and 10 being 10 million roughly.
David Bishop (00:12:47): Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, so you find there are fair, fair amount of CEO founders that are willing to walk away at that stage.
Brian Bell (00:12:54): I’ve seen it happen. I wouldn’t say it’s a fair amount. A lot of it, a lot of them probably hold on too long. Yeah.
David Bishop (00:12:58): Yeah.
Brian Bell (00:12:59): Yeah. You know, they’re not willing to make the transition. I mean, it’s really, it really takes a special founder to take something zero to like a billion dollars. Right. That’s a real special founder, right. That can keep growing with the organization. And I know what, what do you see in your, in your experience?
David Bishop (00:13:12): Yeah, I think they definitely want to see it through, whatever see it through means for them, you know, kind of what exit they have, whether it’s being bought by a strategic or going public or whatever, that most of them want to be in it for the long haul. You know, that is sometimes where it gets frustrating for the organization and for the CEO founder, because they do have to, as I like to describe, get off the dance floor and into the balcony, right? So they need to be overseeing what’s happening as opposed to being in the data.
Brian Bell (00:13:47): So what’s your engagement kind of process look like? Let’s imagine you have a series of startups struggling with this. You kind of come in, you meet the founder, obviously you do a 30 minute kind of intro call. Let’s say they lean in after.
Brian Bell (00:13:57): Yep. What’s the typical engagement process look like for you?
David Bishop (00:14:00): Yeah. So then I get them to normally, occasionally it doesn’t go this way, but normally I get them to engage in a 360 process. There are a variety of assessment tools that I’m certified in, but I find that if I can get a list of sort of six or eight people that work around them, you might be a board member or two, always the people that report to them. And then we start to look at the signature strengths of that individual, because sometimes you can make meaningful change by just doing more of what you’re really good at. And then we look at things where you could be even more effective if you changed this, right?
Brian Bell (00:14:39): It’s so funny you mentioned 360. My spouse has an AI startup called Your360.ai. I don’t know if that’s hit your radar yet. But basically, they use AI to do voice 360 assessments. So it’s very cost effective and helps them really synthesize the feedback beyond surveys and forms.
David Bishop (00:14:59): Yeah, tell me more about that.
Brian Bell (00:15:00): Yeah, it’s called Your360.ai. I’ll make an intro after we record this. And her co-founder is going to come on the podcast in maybe five or 10 episodes from now. And it might be something cool to use in your practice because you basically have this AI agent. I forget what her name is. It’s like Pam or something. And she goes and talks to all your colleagues. And people seem to give better feedback when you’re talking to somebody. It’s kind of like the problem you probably face in your practice where Yeah, like people can fill out forms and fill out surveys and stuff, but if they’re talking to a consultant and actually running the, you know, the whole 360, which costs a lot of money for like an executive level 360, might be a way to do more of these, right? And so they have whole companies now doing 360s. Everybody’s getting a 360. Wow. Yeah, you can really scale it. You can scale it with AI now. Yeah, that’s interesting. So rather than a thousand bucks per or even 10,000, if it’s actually mediated by human for, I think it’s 200 is what they charge per, per feedback.
David Bishop (00:16:01): Yeah, and I like that better than some of the assessment tools that are out there, which are, you know, rigorous, detailed, get you good information, but it’s just not the same as actually having a dialogue with someone.
Brian Bell (00:16:13): Yeah, those 360s are so valuable and they’re usually, you know, they’re not available unless you’re an exec, right? Or a founder. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, at Microsoft, I think we didn’t get 360s until we were up for partner level, which is L68, which is above senior director, but before VP. Yeah. Only partners and VPs and above got 360s because they’re so expensive to run.
David Bishop (00:16:35): Yeah, sure. Sure. Yeah. So at any rate, I find myself more often than not doing the one-on-one interviews myself because I can pick up cultural clues around that. So I can understand sort of the... The aquarium they’re swimming in, if you will, right, to get the full picture of the culture and the individual. So then we come back together. And this is where I use my rudimentary version of AI, where I dump in all my notes and get a report that goes back to the CEO founder. And then we look at these signature strengths and areas where they can be more effective. And then we talk about maybe two behaviors that can really leverage performance of the organization. Ultimately, that’s what you’re looking for is to really increase productivity, increase engagement and profitability. So we talk about how that works. And then it’s almost like training a new muscle. So we look for opportunities where they can go back to their team. They can show off these new behaviors. And then we measure the results.
Brian Bell (00:17:42): What’s the most incredible or bombastic result you’ve ever had out of one of those 360s?
David Bishop (00:17:47): There is a CEO founder that I was working with early on. I did a 360, came back with a lot of strong points. This was a brilliant PhD out of Stanford, came up with a groundbreaking idea, attracted kind of friends and like-minded people around him. I did the 360. We came back together. We started to work together, seemed like everything was going fine. At the end of this, like usually kind of a six-month period, I go back to those same individuals. And what I found was there were several of them that said, I’m not even going to talk to you. This is... it’s a waste of waste of time nothing’s changed so you know i’m in southern california as we referenced before flew up to san francisco where their offices were i said pick a restaurant we’re going there and so i said okay it’s time for you to decide you want to be a ceo founder or do you want to be a founder. You can still be a founder, still be part of the growth, get somebody else to run the company. But it’s really come to the point where it’s up to you to make that decision. And he thought about it, got back to me, said, all right, let’s do this work. And and since that time, the company is really I mean, it didn’t happen right away, obviously. But after a few months really working together, he made some tough choices with with people that were that were friends and started to surround himself with people that he could he could actually delegate to and became a new version of himself, became someone who, again, He felt in the past, felt like he had to be in the middle of everything, but could never be focused enough for him to actually serve that role. To someone who is more supportive, more there as someone who could oversee the direction of the company, set the strategic priorities, and then let the people deliver the results.
Brian Bell (00:19:52): That’s amazing. What do you still draw on from your days at Sony and MGM? What are some challenges and experiences where you kind of keep pulling out of your quiver, so to speak?
David Bishop (00:20:03): Yeah, I guess the common thread, and I was actually just at lunch today with an executive from a large content company. And really the common thread through all of this is just the rapid amount of change that is happening everywhere, right? Regardless if you’re a startup or not. Are you familiar with the concept of VUCA? So VUCA is, it really, it stands for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity. Right. And it describes the, I think the environment that all businesses are.
Brian Bell (00:20:40): Right. Yeah. We’re going through another platform shift. AI is eating a lot of software and jobs and displacement and yeah, it’s creating a lot. Yeah. So I just, yeah. VUCA. Yeah.
Brian Bell (00:20:50): So a new acronym for me to pull out. So. Or if you’re more optimist like me, we’re kind of living through the singularity. We’re kind of living through this either slow or fast takeoff of AI self-improving and really rapidly changing our lives in the next five to 20 years.
David Bishop (00:21:07): Yeah, no, I just did a facilitated discussion with Pinterest around this, which initially I was like, Pinterest, they seem like they’re kind of on the edge, but there is active discussion of, okay, what’s next? And is AI really a real threat for us?
Brian Bell (00:21:22): Well, if you think about Pinterest’s business model, it’s people sharing images, right?
Brian Bell (00:21:25): Exactly. AI can generate imagery. What does that even mean for an image board?
David Bishop (00:21:29): So I would say that’s really the, and so that was something that I lived through and had to run organizations around that threat of change.
Brian Bell (00:21:40): Yeah, you led teams through this, from VHS to DVD to Blu-ray to streaming.
Brian Bell (00:21:47): Exactly, right. Yeah, so you’ve seen it firsthand. Yep, exactly.
Brian Bell (00:21:51): So how do you kind of balance that tension between, it sounds like you’ll work with Series A startups, but also like some pretty large ones and even public companies like Pinterest. Yeah, what percentage of your business is really early stage?
David Bishop (00:22:01): Yeah, I’d say it’s really the kind of, 50 50 now you know again i when when i started i was thinking that media would be be my focus and and it tended not to be and i think it might have actually been a combination of me coming from the role that i was in and now suddenly presented as an executive coach or leadership development expert i think there was a little bit of a disconnect there initially and then as my practice started to develop the media company started to find me. And so now I’d say it’s it’s equal parts media companies and CEO founders. So it’s a nice combination. The media companies like the fact that that I know the world. I know what’s happening. I know the disruption that’s occurring, but also the exponential growth that’s happening, or at least has happened. Maybe it’s not growing as fast as it has over the past, you know, four or five years.
Brian Bell (00:23:00): What patterns do you often see back to the founder shift from operator to leader? What are some patterns, positive and negative that you see?
David Bishop (00:23:08): Yeah, I mean, they all go through this, you know, sort of hero’s journey, if you’re familiar with that, right?
Brian Bell (00:23:16): Maybe you can explain what that is for anybody that doesn’t know what that is. I know what it is. Blanking on the name of the guy who focused on myths.
Brian Bell (00:23:22): It originates with Gilgamesh, right? Kind of the epic tale of Gilgamesh, yeah.
David Bishop (00:23:26): Yeah, but there was actually a college professor who did a lot of work on this, so much so that George Lucas hired him to help him craft the story arc around Star Wars. So and what he what he found is like if you look at all the mythology throughout the ages and around the world, there there is this this common heroes journey. Right. So and it marries very well with the CEO founders journey where they have this call to action where it’s like, okay, I don’t want to do that job anymore. I thought of this thing. I’m going to chase it. I’m going to get the fundraising. I’m going to go out. I’m going to attract smart people to help me do that. And then along the way, they meet somebody who can help them on that journey, whether it’s a mentor or an investor who can also serve as a mentor along the way. And then they have this thread where they meet a lot of challenges or temptations. It may be that they’re not getting the momentum that they thought they were, or they want to try to get the business to do too many things instead of the main thing that they were focused on or the main vision that they had. And then they all go through this kind of dark.
Brian Bell (00:24:50): period where in they also get some some companions too yeah exactly there’s usually like a quirky companion and there’s like the old like sage yeah obi-wan kenobi kind of companion and
David Bishop (00:25:01): exactly exactly right and they all you know they all then go through this kind of abyss if you will you stay with the star wars analogy it was you know when when luke skywalker was out in the in the wilderness and just scared and frightened and not know what to do so but they all seem to kind of get to that point whether it means like i’m trying to avoid the the word pivot because it’s so overused but they reach to this part where maybe the thing that they started out doing is not is not working as well they have to kind of reinvent it there’s a lot of self-doubt in there uh there’s a lot of pain and and suffering And if they stay on that path, then they come through this period where they start to transform themselves. They transform the organization and they get to this point where they can deliver the vision that they set out to do. And it usually ends with some kind of homecoming or celebration if you’d stay with the you know, stay with the myths and legends. And so I think that that maps pretty closely with what a CEO founder goes through.
Brian Bell (00:26:12): Yeah, love that. So how do you help leaders create psychological safety without losing accountability?
David Bishop (00:26:19): Yeah, that’s a good one. And it’s a tough thing to thread, right? But I find that in an organization that if you measure the things that are important – then the people will tell you how you’re doing right and that that includes you know on on the one hand creating a an environment where all ideas are welcome right doesn’t mean that that they’re all going to be executed on but people need to feel that they can come to their boss or to the ceo or or or whomever and say hey i figured out this thing i think this is this might be a better way to go and not just be completely shut down like Who do you think you are? It’s not your job. But on the other hand, everybody’s paid to get things done, right? So there has to be a measure of, okay, well, we’re expected to do this thing in this time, or we set out this strategy of who we wanna be and what we wanna accomplish. And there has to be metrics around that to have the leader be able to reflect back to the organization, hey, we’re getting to where we said we were going. Does that make sense? But those two things need to go together or else the organization gets crippled. Because you don’t get the full impact of a team if you don’t allow them to participate.
Brian Bell (00:27:51): Speaking of which, what blind spots do most founder leaders have around team dynamics?
David Bishop (00:27:57): Yeah, so... Yeah, I mean, it’s a complicated question, but a lot of it ends up being around the area of micromanaging where they don’t create that kind of bond of trust, you know, where they say,
