In this episode, Joe Ayoub and Raza Shaikh welcome Mark Hamill, CEO of The Naked Headhunter and co-founder of the Virtual Advisory Board (VAB).
Mark shares the origin story of VAB from its start during the COVID-19 pandemic and how it scaled into a global network of over 1,300 members spanning 4,000 boards. The conversation dives into the power of peer-to-peer networks, the mechanics of building effective boards, and the tangible ROI that strong boards can deliver.
They also unpack the realities of board recruitment, what it takes to land a first board seat, and why clarity of expertise and network strength are more important than ever. Mark offers a grounded perspective on the future of board service, emphasizing experience, diversity of thought, and the growing demand for board members who have “walked the walk.”
Key takeaways
- Boards deliver outsized ROI when done right
- Board investment is relatively small compared to impact
- Experienced board members accelerate growth, decision making and access
- A small, structured board can shift a company’s trajectory by turning big picture ambitions into executable strategy
- Your first board seat is almost always the hardest to secure
- Most board roles come through networks, not formal channels
- Once you secure your first board seat, credibility compounds quickly and future opportunities will tend to follow
- Mark highlights the importance of understanding yourself and your unique leadership experiences before connecting with networks
- Community and peer learning drive board success
- The Virtual Advisory Board thrives on member led engagement and shared experiences
- The group creates a trustworthy environment for honest conversions where leaders can discuss difficult and high pressure decisions
- Members bring live challenges and get immediate input from peers who’ve faced similar situations
- Board composition is about complementary experience
- Strong boards blend industry expertise, scaling experience, and global perspective
- Diversity of experience leads to better outcomes
- The most effective boards are intentionally built around the company’s specific stage and challenges, rather than prestige or status
Quotes
“The strength of your network really becomes 80% of the reason how your next role will be sourced.”
“We’re (VAB) not going to tell you what to do, but we can certainly share experiences of how other people have dealt with it.”
“ Where you are in your board journey, there’ll be different tracks internally that you can kind of take depending on where you are in your voyage.”
Links
Bio
Mark is the CEO and founder of Naked Headhunter and has been involved in executive search since 1999. During his career he has placed over 500 executives and he works across all practice groups. Mark began his career at Heineken; serving the company in a variety of commercial roles both in Ireland and in Central Europe. In 1999, he himself was “headhunted” for a job in the executive search sector and has never looked back.
Transcript:
Joe: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to On Boards, a deep dive at what drives business success. I’m Joe Ayoub, and I’m here with my co-host, Raza Shaikh. Twice a month, On Boards is the place to learn about one of the most critically important aspects of any company or organization; its board of directors or advisors, with a focus on the important issues that are facing boards, company leadership, and stakeholders.
Raza: Joe and I speak with a wide range of guests and talk about what makes a board successful or unsuccessful, what it means to be an effective board member, and how to make your board one of the most valuable assets of your organization.
Joe: Before we introduce our guest, we want to thank the Law Firm of Nutter McClennen & Fish, who again has sponsored our most recent On Boards Summit in their conference center in the Boston Seaport. Nutter has been an incredible partner with us in every way; we appreciate all they’ve done to [00:01:00] support this podcast.
Our guest today is Mark Hamill. Mark is a board-level advisor and ecosystem builder. As the CEO and founder of The Naked Headhunter, Mark leads a global search practice that founders and family businesses turn to when they need to identify a truly important talent, whether that’s a transformational C-Suite executive or a game-changing board member.
Raza: Mark is also co-founder of the Virtual Advisory Board (VAB), a global network of over 1,300 world-class CEOs, entrepreneurs, investors, and executives spanning 85-plus countries and 145 industry sectors. VAB exists to connect outstanding leaders with board opportunities and peer relationships. Mark also participates in CEO Coffee, a [00:02:00] peer group bringing business leaders together in the spirit he loves the most; real conversations built on trust.
Joe: Welcome, Mark. Thank you for joining us today on On Boards.
Mark: Fabulous, guys. You guys are going to do my intros wherever I go, that was unbelievable.
Joe: That’s our biggest talent right there, yeah, the intro. So, let’s talk about the Virtual Advisory Board. One of the things we didn’t say in the opening is that those 1,300 members are now collectively members of 4,000 boards, which is pretty impressive. What led you to start Virtual Advisory Board?
Mark: It was March 20th, and I was two bottles of Żubrówka in, Joe, so things were rough and very fuzzy back in COVID. The liquid lubricant was working its magic on the creativity. I suppose I’d felt, during those kind of initial days of COVID, [00:03:00] just this tremendous need to communicate, to connect. Nobody knew what was going on.
Having been a member of YPO, Vistage, Renaissance Executive Forums, I love peer-to-peer communities, so there’s a lot of outreach from people I know, obviously from my search practice as well. Leaders, CEOs, board members saying, “Hey, Mark, what’s going on? What are you hearing? Like let’s just share a bit of experience.”
So, my idea was really just to put people together just to do some connections. We did Zoom calls. The first 10 members kind of signed up, then it was 20, then it was 40, then it was 80, and then it kept growing and it really was built on the uncertainty that we leaned into during COVID and a feeling of, “Look, how can I help? I’m a seasoned CEO, I’m an experienced board member. Look, is there anything I can do to help another entrepreneur, family, business member, PE-backed business. I’ve got all this tons of experience, years of global international experience. [00:04:00] I’d love to be able to help.”
We said, “Look, let’s just start talking. We’ll pick a few themes, kind of board impact, board performance, building a board, a few kind of classic themes around the board advisory space.” And through word of mouth, guys, we just kept growing. New people just kept appearing.
We had a super, super simple membership model. I think then we were charging like $99 a year, just, “Hey, look, let’s just see where this thing goes, like put some grease on the wheels.”
I remember Gary, one of our first members and he was on our first advisory board. He said, “Mark, look, keep it simple, man. If you give enough value to each member, that they renew and they recommend you just one other member in that year, you’ll double in size every year.” That’s unbelievable. It’s so simple, but so true. So, we kind of kept to that kind of core value of just keep adding value, keep impacting, and so just word of mouth was the whole kind of experience. And like I said, the virtual bit in the Virtual Advisory Board name came from the fact that we were [00:05:00] all stuck behind a screen. It’s crazy to think it was only a couple of years ago.
Joe: It wasn’t long ago, and I will say the last time I had two bottles of Rioja, my next task was not to found a worldwide organization; its members are part of 4,000 boards, so I give you a lot of credit for that. You could have gone in a lot of directions after that.
So, one of the things that drove the growth of VAB was that people were hungry to communicate and be in touch. What else drove it? Because the pandemic ended, and it still grows and you’re still doing it. What are the things that continue to drive its growth and its success globally?
Mark: I think a huge part was probably just total focus on the board space, and it’s such an old boys kind of network, like how do I break into it? How do I find my first board role? And I think people just got confused, but it was not just about like publicly-listed company boards; there’s entrepreneurs who need board members; there’s family [00:06:00] businesses going from a G-2 to G-3 transition; entrepreneurs looking to grow internationally, do M&A; PE-backed businesses looking for highly credible experts.
But there was no real kind of resource in terms of how do I find these roles? Executive search firms do a little bit of board search work; some are quite specialized. LinkedIn, you wouldn’t really find too much, but it was very kind of dusty kind of conversations. It wasn’t really something people spoke about too openly. So, it was really just lifting the lid on it, guys; we can all kind of add value in different ways.
Having kind of come at it from an executive search point of view, it’s just about trying to match find chemistry, find value match, find experiential vertical matches. Worst case, just put people together for interesting conversations. That’s the only kind of downside, you know?
Joe: Yeah. Worst case, yeah.
Mark: Yeah, I think it was really just a lifting the lid. So, much of my community was going gray with me. I’m 52 now, so I was like 48, 49 when I set up VAB, and it really [00:07:00] was just my network that I’d known with 25-, 30-year kind of corporate careers, reaching the top of their pyramids and just realizing, “Look, there’s got to be more to life outside my corporate existence or I’ve been an entrepreneur, what next, how can I kind of help?”
So, it was really just that simple, and I think then the other shift was obviously coming out of COVID, there was just such a massive need for in-person get together. Everyone was so hungry to kind of get together, so we then kind of flipped from obviously a purely virtual learning calendar to in-person events and we did 200 in-person events last year, so that was a big shift obviously for us.
Joe: One thing I noticed during the pandemic, or certainly into the pandemic, is that companies who might have previously not thought much about their boards suddenly were much more focused on them. Because what happened, as you probably know, is companies with real boards had help [00:08:00] in kind of thinking through how do we get through this very unprecedented time and companies with boards that didn’t do anything or they’d been meeting for years to find new board members suddenly realized, “We didn’t get any help from our board.” Did you run into that at all?
Mark: Yeah. I thought there was a huge kind of lack of awareness and education, particularly in kind of owner founder communities around how to put a board together. I think almost a fear factor, “Oh, my God, that’s going to be so complicated. I don’t want to do that. It’s going to be expensive and complicated.” When the reality is it’s unbelievably simple and it’s probably the best money you’ll spend on like guidance, advice, shared experience.
Joe: No question.
Mark: So, it really was kind of lifting the veil a little bit on that and saying, “Look, guys, it’s actually not hard. Here’s some kind of guidelines.” We had data on board comp, kind of US, Europe, middle East, Asia, and it just became really clear that the impact of putting a board together. So, the ROI, if [00:09:00] you put a board together, three, four people total board comp is going to be $250,000, $300,000 a year to run it. Like that board will have anywhere between a hundred to a thousand X ROI just by stuff they’re bringing or saving you or their connections, the conversations they can open.
So, just simple bang for book, it’s just incredible, but I think there wasn’t enough known about it. Yeah. There was a bit of a uncertainty. The education bit was quite large in the first few years and continues to be.
Joe: I was just going to say the bang for the buck is the thing that many owners, and maybe executives, don’t fully understand. I think that’s a great point.
Raza: Mark, so since the start of VAB, it has evolved a little bit, talk a little bit more about what does VAB do today from a member’s perspective, what do we get as a member?
Mark: So, one of my key pieces and having learned from, like I said, YPO and Vistage and Rens I am being involved, and in [00:10:00] other peer-to-peer global organizations, which absolutely changed and maybe there’s just a huge personal kind of experience there, I put my first board together before I did a management buyout on my search firm, added to that board to have my exit to private equity. I had no idea what I was doing. I never bought a business or sold a business.
Joe: Mm-hmm.
Mark: I needed to get smart fast and surround myself with people who could help guide me on those two moments. So, I think it was kind of trying to return the gift a little bit to other kind of entrepreneurs saying, “Look, you don’t need to try to figure it out all yourself.” When we put VAB together, we were quite conscientious on building this kind of member experience process; what is the member journey?
Raza: Mm-hmm.
Mark: So, exactly like you pointed out, Raza, so what is a member experience in the first three months, second quarter, third quarter, after the first year, then into year two and year three? It could be quite different things you’re looking for as a member.
So, when you’re starting, we talk about kind of BoardLearn or board curious or board experience, where you are in your board journey, there’ll be different tracks internally that you can kind of take depending on where you are in [00:11:00] your voyage. Not everybody’s starting with the same experience.
So, we have kind of member criteria in terms of years of experience in a role, international kind of career that you have, but some will be looking to ideally find their first board role in the next 12 months. Others will be trying to find a better balanced portfolio already with kind of seven board roles that they’re maybe looking to offboard one or two in the next 12 months and looking to replenish with a different type of board roles. So, those members have different expectations, different journeys, different path ahead of them, so some will have kind of quite focused tracks.
Then there’ll be combination events as well where everybody gets to learn from each other because even somebody coming onto a board for the first time with, for example, a strong AI background, the person who’s seven boards in can learn a lot from that person as the other way around, so it’s not just only one way, it goes both ways.
So, I think the cross pollination and the blending of those stories, because, ultimately, for me, my [00:12:00] belief was headhunters can be pretty bloody useless, like I speak as one. I mean, I love my job, but I felt that all the data shows that it’s 80% likely that first or next board role will come from your network or network’s network.
When you ask board members, how did you find your role? Eighty percent says, “Look, I was recommended. I was referred in by this person.” So, the strength of your network really becomes 80% of the reason how your next role will be sourced.
Raza: Mark, you now have a global network of members, how do you keep them engaged?
Mark: I think the global bit was really important. So, we did not want to be like a local club, rather, it really was we didn’t want to be like a London based or Paris based or New York based. It really was the global nature because that was the experience through COVID. Look, if you’re sitting in Dallas, you can sit on a board in Dublin. If you can add value there, you can sit on a board in Dubai. Because of your location, it’s more really your experience that [00:13:00] matters.
Do a lot even on the executive search side. So, in The Naked Headhunter we do a lot of board searches for international businesses looking for US-based board members, so outside of kind of VAB. But those looking for highly experienced executives in US, which could be a core growth market, already is a core growth market, or they’re looking to acquire businesses there, finding US-based board members, even though the board is sitting back in Dublin, London, Geneva, wherever it is.
So, I think that that global nature was hugely important for me, because I think, again, just on that cross pollination, if I’m on a VAB call in my first couple of weeks, I get to hear Raza’s story or Joe, I’m saying, “Oh, my God, I got to connect you with a buddy of mine who’s in Dubai who is looking to kind of build his board and you’re going to be a great match. I’d love to put you guys together.”
Raza: Basically, you’re acting like a matchmaker. Once members join, why do they stay? What keeps them there?
Mark: On the matchmaker bit rather, we have had one wedding. So, apart from all the board seats, we’ve had one wedding.
Raza: You did the matchmaking.
Mark: We did. We did [00:14:00] the matchmaking in Switzerland.
Joe: Any kids yet?
Mark: There is one. We have that story.
Raza: So, why do they stay and keep coming back to VAB activities?
Mark: I think we keep it fresh. There’s been so much learning in the five years, so many things we’ve done right. Other things, less well. We’ve tried to keep a very member-led approach. Like I’ve always had the belief, look, I love kind of kicking things off. I love getting the engagement, getting the excitement, but I’m a terrible CEO, like I’m awful at being disciplined and diligent and planning things. David joined me very early in the process. We built a board around the work David and I were doing, and like I said earlier, like a members’ expectations will change where they are in that board journey year one to year five.
Raza: Yeah.
Mark: I think that the starting point. Raza, like I said, just provide enough value so people stick around and keep referring in other interesting people from their network was just such a guiding principle so we are constantly listening to what the members wanted. So, I [00:15:00] think that’s kind of still a core, it’s not a value, but it’s a core kind of theme for us that we’re constantly trying to figure out and ask and get engagement.
So, many of our activities are led by members, all are like ambassadors in different markets. Our local chairs in different markets are all active volunteer members who care and want to make sure the community kind of thrives. There’s relevance in their local markets as well, so while globally we’re providing the global learning calendar, there will be variances at local market level depending on the cohorts that are there.
Raza: I’d say the member-led aspect really resonates with me. You cannot scale a group if you had to do everything and provide every content, every engagement, every training, and so on, and it’s really spectacular because the members come with a really amazing set of experiences, expertise, and skill.
Mark: The best events I’ve gone to, Raza, I’ve had absolutely nothing to do with, I just turn up, because a local member, if it’s Ahmed in Dubai, or James and Liz in London, or David and the guys in New York, they know what they’re [00:16:00] doing better than I do. They know what those members are interested in, what’s relevant for them in their markets, and I’m happy to still be invited occasionally.
Joe: To what extent do in-person events now have a place in the Virtual Advisory Board?
Mark: I think we got used to virtual by situation. As humans, there’s nothing like shaking hands or giving a hug or just looking somebody in the eyes. I think that the presence is so important. In-person events are just fantastic. I think virtual events are great. There’s a place for them, and you can pull people together from different parts of the world and share experience on a virtual call. It’s great, but the in-person events really make such a difference.
Joe: Talk a little bit about what you do in person, and is it local in person or do people come from countries to be together in person?
Mark: What we haven’t done, and that’s definitely on the agenda, Joe, is to do kind of a global leadership event, kind of a flagship annual event. People would come in from all over the place. At the moment, our local events [00:17:00] will be kind of city based, so we had one in Seoul recently, Sydney, like I said, it is incredible. I wake up every morning, get my calendar, “Okay, there was an event in Rio last night, or there was an event in Riyadh like in two days. Wow, this is incredible. “
So, the events team provide structure, help provide content, but the ideas will be kind of locally sourced and locally executed. I think that the next step for us kind of having gone from kind of small in-person events to now larger, so it can be 30, 40. The Switzerland events are unbelievably well represented, typically with 40 or 50 members.
Joe: Wow.
Mark: They’ll do like four or five different events a year. We’re trying to have the calendar so people can see. So, if a member is traveling to a different city, they can literally go into the events page and say, “Look, actually, I’m going to be in Barcelona, or I’m going to be in Madrid, or I’m going to be in Paris, I want to tie up my trip with a VAB event,” and there’s no additional cost, you just sign up, register, and turn up.
Again, that was, I suppose, the setup not to have local chapters where they’re protecting [00:18:00] themselves, but you’re a member globally first and locally, depending on where you are, rather than you’re a local member and you get to partake, so it was the other way around sort of the original concept.
Joe: That makes sense.
Raza: Mark, switching to board recruiting, what advice do you give candidates that are seeking their first board seat? What should they be thinking of doing right now?
Mark: My first advice would be like how realistic are you? I think looking at what are your unique leadership experiences and trying to understand almost this reverse headhunting mindset that I come in with, I’d say, “Look, you know, in a typical executive search or board search, you’re looking at a profile that matches people who match a profile. If you’re leaning into, “Look, I want to find my first board role,” first, you got to understand what you’re bringing, what are the top three, top five unique leadership experiences, the vertical market expertise, turnarounds, scaling, leadership, whatever they are, within kind of geographies or verticals.
Once you’re clear on that, [00:19:00] you’re taking that into your market, into your network, if that’s in VAB or whatever peer-to-peer organization you’re in, or group you’re in, so your network really understands what are the three things Raza does incredibly well. So, when they’re sitting down with somebody at lunch in two weeks’ time, they’re like, “Oh, my God, I got to connect you with Raza because he does exactly what you’re looking to do or what you need.” So, I think so many people struggle with clarity on what their unique leadership experiences are.
Raza: I mean, is it partly because everybody wants to be on a board, not necessarily understanding what it means to be? Joe and I often talk on this podcast that being on a board is itself a job and a real thing. It’s not an honorific position. It’s not for status or fun. You really are there to do a job, and that job, I think as you’re explaining, that in that proverbial board composition matrix, which [00:20:00] checkboxes for a given board, you might be able to take.
Mark: I think it’s the two things, Raza, there is the bit on look, how do I find more of those roles and opportunities, and then what do I do once I’m in it? So, I think there are those like two very different bits. I think the bit on how do I find that first role and my shared experience would be the first one is harder to find, the second one will come a little bit faster, and third one, you’ll have people knocking on your door because it’s already visible what you’re doing in the first two roles.
So, the first one is the hardest one for sure, and I think it is really just being crystal clear on what your unique leadership experiences are and trying to find relevant CEOs or other board members who might have a need for somebody with that combined skill set and experience set. And then, like you said, what do you do when you’re in the role? How do you kind of better prepare and how can you impact those businesses in kind of positive ways. So, I think they’re two different voyages obviously linked and one comes quicker than the other. But yeah, absolutely.
Raza: And for VAB members, those opportunities, do they come kind of [00:21:00] organically through these interactions or is there a formal method to bring those opportunities in front of members?
Mark: Maybe that was one of the things we had to be very clear on from the beginning, Raza, and that was maybe slightly complicated by my search background. So, we are trying to be very explicit that we’re not a job board. We’re not a board job board. We’re not a board recruiter. We are a community for like-minded BoardLearn, board experience people to share experience and build out their network. Not to confuse that community with kind of an open job board.
So, don’t join if your expectation is that we will find you a role, that will be the wrong reason to join. Join because you’re interested in connecting globally with other board kind of experience and BoardLearn members. So, I think that was kind of a very important bit that we set out from the very beginning that those expectations were clear.
Raza: Going back to the first board seat, is there a thought and process to get board ready, so to speak, and does VAB help with that process?[00:22:00]
Mark: Yeah, I think that’s a really important point and kind of goes back to what we spoke about previously, Raza, that when you get into the role, what are going to be expectations? We had a case quite recently with a New York-based board member who was stepping on to a very kind of illustrious board and he was like, “Holy shit. How am I going to… well, this could be the most exciting thing in my career and probably will be if I lean into it correctly. But I’m sitting on this board with incredibly renowned kind of business leaders.” And he wanted to have a little bit more prep, so we were able to put a roundtable of other very experienced VAB board members just to give him a little bit of comfort that he’s there for all the right reasons. He’s being selected for all the right reasons, and here’s a little bit from their experience, what to maybe expect in those first couple of board meetings.
Joe: I didn’t realize you did something so attuned or so focused on one board member. That is really great member service actually.
Mark: And again, that goes back to just listening to what the members need, Joe, and [00:23:00] that agility that look again versus like some of their peer-to-peer groups I’ve been involved in, it could take like seven, eight weeks to put a certain kind of call together, a shared experience call together, like we can do it in 24 hours. Like, okay, look, this is the need. This is what a member’s kind of struggling with.
We’ve had members with, “i probably have to fire the CEO tomorrow or recommend that we fire the CEO. I’ve never done it before. Could I get some shared experience in how to do that,” and 24 hours would be tough.
Joe: But even 48 hours to put together a roundtable of people that can really weigh in on one of the most important things a board does, that’s impressive. What allows you to be so nimble?
Mark: The huge part is probably the intimacy. The fact that we have been built on that first kind of 200 members was all kind of personally known to me. They recommended the second 200, so we went up to 400 and so on. So, knowing kind of all the members or knowing a significant portion of all the members is hugely helpful in that [00:24:00] regard. Certainly, the original kind of membership over the first two, three years, so knowing who the most experienced members are, having had one-on-one calls or conversations with them or sat in on calls where we’re doing kind of needs and leads or member onboarding or member introductions, you get to hear their stories. And for me, my currency is member stories and try to find ways to connect them.
So, look, if I hear this is what a member is struggling with, it’s like, “Well, hang on a minute. Look, we’ll get three to five members together, we’ll put on a call and we’ll help you kind of figure that out. We’re not going to tell you what to do, but we can certainly share experience how other people have dealt with it.”
Joe: Fantastic.
Raza: Mark, zooming out, just wanted to get your perspective on where is board service overall headed? Are we getting better? Is it changing? How is it changing? Maybe five, 10 years, what do we see in the crystal ball?
Mark: Again, removing kind of the publicly-listed kind of space, so again, really focusing on kind of owner-founder, family business, kind of investor [00:25:00] backboards, I think there will be like more and more of a need for highly-experienced board members. The data we have shows incredibly increasing, number of boards being built, therefore more need for board members.
Particularly when you look at the international bit, so if it’s emerging market, companies being put together, looking to lean into experience from experienced board members or other CEOs who’ve grown, scaled, exited businesses. I think looking at family businesses going from a G-2 to G-3 looking to transition an older board into kind of a more impactful, kind of younger board, not even thinking about new themes like AI or ESG, or diversity. Those are very relevant.
But I just think at a core, a CEO who’s driving a business for the first time, they’ve done the hard yards of a zero to $25 million, like pound, Euro business, and they’re reaching a point saying, “Look, what’s next? How do I take this [00:26:00] 25 and scale it to a hundred? How do I scale to strategic? How do I talk to private equity? How do I fundraise? How do I buy a business in the US or how do I grow there?” Putting a board together can just help you tremendously to solve those three pain points you’ve got.
I had a member whose board we recently built, they had their second board meeting recently, and he said, “Mark, look, thank you so much.” There was a three person board we put together, and he said that the board is helping me turn my mission into a to-do list and we’re working through the to-do list.
That’s so beautiful, they’re helping you as a CEO take a hundred million business. He’s looking to scale it to a billion dollars. These three guys are helping you turn that into like a to-do list, and they’re helping you tick those boxes.
Joe: Yeah, that is a great way to think about the incredible impact. I mean, our opening to the podcast says, learn about one of the most critically important aspects of any company or organization. Obviously, that’s how we started this podcast because we think it’s so incredibly valuable, but [00:27:00] you’ve been able to articulate some of the ways in which your organization really delivers that value to members. I think that’s terrific.
Mark: Joe, thanks for that compliment.
Raza: Mark, this question may not have like a right crisp answer, but what background, experiences, skills, expertise are most in demand for boards these days?
Mark: Again, looking at my viewpoint, which is kind of owner, founder, or family business, the scale and exit experience is huge. I want somebody who’s sat in my shoes, who’s been a CEO, who understands the challenges I’m facing every day, the juggling kind of from a personal family business perspective. So, I think having somebody who’s walk the walk or talk the talk is huge.
I think particularly when you’re looking at kind of a three-person board, you’re looking at different [00:28:00] experiences, so you still might be looking for the industry expert profile. You might then be looking for somebody who’s scaled and exited because that’s what you want to do, and somebody who has some international growth experience.
So, what I love about different board members would get to speak the diversity of experiences, there’s no one shot like this guy or girl has done it all, there you only need one of those. I think it’s the blending, which makes it powerful and more impactful.
Joe: Absolutely. There’s no question that it’s the blending of a diversity of perspectives and experience. That’s what makes the board powerful.
Mark: I think that it’s probably even just simply that belief that no matter how difficult you think your business challenge is, or your most pressing business challenge, there is somebody out there who’s dealt with it who could probably help.
So, I think it’s just being open to maybe a few of those conversations could help rather than just that lonely feeling of, oh my God, like I’m drowning in this problem. Don’t feel you have to figure it out by yourself, and I think the beautiful thing about [00:29:00] when people lean into that board phase of their career, they’re not doing it for the money. I’ve always believed, look, don’t do shit for free.
I mean, time is your ultimate currency but you’re not really at that phase doing it for the money, like you’re doing it because you care, because you can help. The money is just to reflect your time. Don’t feel you have to figure it all out by yourself, like don’t be that lonely entrepreneur whatever structure you put on it, fiduciary board, advisory board, whatever restraints you have, but do surround yourself with people who can help, because people generally like to help, and if they have shared experience or particular domain expertise, they will. If they like you, they will.
The deal you put together with them, like look, you guys have seen all the data. We have the data. The data is the data. The market rate is the market rate. Like it’s not a particularly scary number. And like I said, the ROI on engaging a couple of board members is nuts compared to how they’ll help.
Joe: Incredibly well said. Mark, fascinating conversation. Thank you [00:30:00] so much for joining us today.
Mark: Thank you, Joe. Thank you, Raza. Such a pleasure.
Joe: And thank you all for listening to On Boards with our guest, Mark Hamill.
Raza: Please visit our website at OnBoardsPodcast.com. That’s OnBoardsPodcast.com. We would love to hear your comments, suggestions and feedback. If you’re not already a subscriber, please be sure to subscribe at Apple Podcast, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast. And remember to leave us a five-star review.
Joe: And please tune in for the next episode of On Boards. Thanks.