The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Corporate Match Maker by Martin Rowinsk, CEO at boardsi

Episode Date: October 9, 2021

The Corporate Match Maker by Martin Rowinsk, CEO at boardsi Corporatematchmakerbook.com CREATING A ROBUST BOARD ROOM Every CEO needs a Board of Directors and a Board of Advisors to help them think clearly about important business decisions, but many challenges surface when we start thinking about how to assemble the perfect team. When challenges arise, people call in the Corporate Matchmaker, Martin Rowinski. Martin is the co-founder and CEO of Boardsi. He knows how to connect the right people to the advisory positions that drive epic business. His expertise is what businesses need! The unique and proven strategies that Martin has cultivated in the Boardroom were formed throughout his life. He is a Polish immigrant who came to America without any command of the English language. As a child, he always found ways to not only catch up to the other children but move beyond to achieve his goals. Always learning…always growing. Along the way, he gained mastery in the commands of life that are required in a functioning and effective Boardroom. Today, he helps CEO’s meet diverse and qualified people they need to cultivate a dynamic and innovative Board. This is a process that is defined by building up skills, relationships, and exploring how a Board can best be built for a company’s specific needs, and in collaboration with its CEO. When all these elements come together, exciting and innovative business outcomes begin to surface. Everyone wins, regardless of their position in the company. This is the book that CEO’s and current/future Board members need. It offers a captivating personal story paired with a dynamic vision geared toward driving better business results.

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. Get ready, get ready, strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms and legs inside the vehicle at all times. Because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com. Thechrisvossshow.com.

Hey, we're coming to you on another great podcast. We certainly appreciate you tuning in. Thanks for being here. Hey, we have a great show today. It's going to be amazing. So amazing. You're definitely going to want to turn up the volume. But even more so, you might want a video version of this.

You go to YouTube.com, Fortuness Chris Voss. You can also go to Goodreads.com, Fortuness Chris Voss. See, we're reading and reviewing. And I just got bored yesterday. I posted my first book up yesterday. So if you want, check that thing out. It's up there on Amazon, wherever fine books are sold as well. I was got bored yesterday. I posted my first book up yesterday. So if you want, check that thing out. It's up there on Amazon, wherever fine books are sold as well.

I was just bored. I was just like, ah, I'll put a book up today. What the hell? It's, you know, whatever. Go to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, all those crazy places where all the kids are playing today. And we post all the stuff that the show and myself are doing. So be sure to check that out as well. Today we have an amazing author coming on the show and myself are doing. So be sure to check that out as well. Today we have an amazing author coming on the show. His book is soon to be up on the interwebs on Amazon in different places,

but he's giving us a preview here, and we're going to find out more about his book and what he does. The book is going to be called The Corporate Matchmaker, and it's by Martin Rovinsky. He's a technological executive with more than 25 years of experience in developing and implementing strategic processes. He's currently the CEO of the executive recruitment firm BoardZ, leading the way for executives to connect with companies seeking executive talent for their board of directors and board of advisors. He is driven by the desire to help businesses of all sizes succeed.

He knows the best way to do this is through helping businesses develop solid alliances between their CEOs and board members. He's the author, like I mentioned, of the forthcoming book, The Corporate Matchmaker, which will be available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Target, and Walmart, or wherever fine books are sold. He is also featured on Entrepreneur, Fast Company, and CEO Today. Martin is not only passionate about helping businesses succeed, but is motivated and inspired by his wife and children. Welcome to the show, Martin. How are you?

I'm great, Chris. Thank you, and congratulations on your book. Thank you. I'm waiting for mine congratulations on yours man they're surviving the writing and the editing especially the editing part oh my god stressful yeah i i lost half my brain and most of my iq points in editing pretty much i handed them like a giant book and then they they cut it down to about three pages said yeah you go back and rewrite all that crap. Yeah. The first part was awful. It wasn't that bad.

It was like 10 pages. So you got cliff notes back, huh? Oh, yeah, pretty much. No, it wasn't that bad. But it felt that way. You know what it's like. You put your heart and soul onto the page, and then they just step on it. They just go, yeah, no.

They just crush it. They just crush your little sandcastle and your dreams right in front of you. And you just go, okay. Anyway, enough about us. Give me your plugs so people can find you on the interwebs and learn more about you. Yeah. As far as our company, it's Board C. It's B-O-A-R-D-S-I.com.

As far as the book, it is available for presale right now. And it's CorporateMatchmakerbook.com. That's my ultimate publishing company that put up that website for me, and they are pre-selling it there. And it should be available any day. We're actually just waiting for Amazon to approve everything. Now, why did you come with the book title, The Corporate Matchmaker? Did you just find that the dating scene for corporations between each other, there wasn't a lot of good mergers going on and breakups and they need a good matchmaker to get their corporate dating down better? Pretty much. The funny story is...

Have they tried Tinder? I don't know. When we talked to the companies, one of my business partners, he's in the B2B side of the business, and he just found that the easiest way to compare what we do was actually a dating website. As soon as we said that, they were like, oh, yeah, I totally get it. When I was thinking of a book title, I just thought that was a perfect match for that. But yeah. Because if you can help them get together, they can make nice little LLC babies and stuff like that. That's absolutely, that's the idea. The more babies, the better.

Grow the family. So what motivated you to want to write this book? So I come, and in the book, I cover a little bit about my history and my background and my journey all the way from Poland. And this is back when I was a little kid and an old man. And it was communist country back then. My mom was just desperate to get me out

and get me into a country with opportunity. So obviously that's U.S. of A. We took a journey, came through Italy, came here, and pretty much right off the bat, maybe five years after I picked up some English and been picked on and bullied, I finally got the handle of everything, understood all the stuff. And at about 16 is when I started becoming an entrepreneur. So throughout my life, I've owned a few different companies, always felt tech estate, tech savvy, can never keep up with it, but you can try changes quicker and quicker every day. But did a lot of consulting and I really enjoyed consulting. So what drove me to starting BoardZ was basically desire to help other companies, but on a massive level.

Meaning if I was to try to do it myself, I can only do so much. But what if we can take other even better executives than I am and their expertise at certain levels and match that up perfectly with companies. So obviously after the company got started, we figured things out, learned things, and picked up things. We just made the decision to basically put it all into a book. This is a great American story. People come to America and succeed. I love it. Now, it says on the cover, creating a robust boardroom.

Is that largely the thrust of the book on how to build a good group of advisors and directors? Yeah, I cover basically a lot of different highlights, everything from like one of the things it's surprising that every company you'll go to, 90% of them will have a mission, vision and values statement on their website. And of course, over time that adjusts and they preach about it. The one thing that a lot of people don't have is their personal mission, vision, and values. I cover a lot of that, ensure that basically your personal mission matches up with whoever you're going to be working for, whether it's an advisor or an employee, but especially as an advisor, because being an

advisor or even on the board, you got to have long-term goals. And it's not a consulting gig where you're going to go in, do your job and get out a month later or two months later. So you really have to believe whatever the company believes and to keep that relationship going for many years and hopefully into an exit, which can take quite a few years. That's just one thing. I cover a lot of talk about diversity at all levels and why it's needed. Not just because the government says you need it, but actually the benefits of having a diverse board. And then I also cover the final date once you are actually talking to them. So it's pretty much everything from the importance

of how to present yourself to get the interview, how to interview, and how to basically serve on a board with purpose so that you actually have some change-making abilities. This is really important because a lot of people don't really know like how to do how do you do board i've never uh you know seen like a some sort of i've never seen a training for how to be on a board other than you talk to people what do i do here at the table do i just throw things at the ceo is that how it works we just throw darts in him is that how it works or rock or we just listen to what he tells us to so i think this is really important and i know as a ceo of my companies I had a really good partner that we largely were just each other's board at the time. But I know when he quit the companies, I was left alone and I really needed a board. I needed people to bounce stuff off.

I created at the time when I wrote in my book about called a virtual board. When you reach us, we weren't quite at the size. We only had 100 plus employees or so. When you reach a size of a company and become serious about going public and stuff, you've really got to get a good board on. You've got to get good people on your thing. And you've got to know how to build it. And so does this work from both aspects of not only teaching people how to be on the board, but also from a CEO or board hirings aspect on how to hire for the board? Absolutely. It covers actually both sides.

It covers the CEO side, how to interview, who to look for. There's a lot of examples. I've even placed some case studies that we've had from Boardsy in there. So there's a lot of different ideas that I cover in there and try to focus on, like you said, for example, a company going public. And at what point, like a lot of questions that I get is, when is it a good time to start bringing on even at a bare minimum board of advisors? And I always say the earlier the better, because if your exit strategy is even in the back of your mind, I'm going to go public one day. You got to have your stuff together pretty early because they're going to go through that paperwork. And if you don't have a good CFO, good luck going public. Yeah. I'm laughing because I'm thinking of WeWork.

Yeah, exactly. In fact, we had some great authors on, I believe, what's it called, the Billionaire Dollar Bust or something. We had one of the Wall Street Journal, I think it was authors, New York Times authors on who wrote the book about the WeWork failure. And that was one of the problems. Their balance sheet was like fluffy as, I don't even think fluffy is the right word.

It was like a pyramid scheme. And all the different kinky things they were and they were they were going fine until you had to start being you know transparent to go public exactly and that's when everyone's what are the owners doing what they're renting back to their own company stuff what what the hell is going on and yeah that thing came down like a house of cards i don't't know. It sure did. It seems like it would take a million years for SoftBank, I think it is, their investor to ever get their money back. I still laugh once in a while because there's a WeWork building just down the street from me. I'm like, God, I can't believe it's still there.

Yeah, I mean, talk about having to throw good money after bad, good money after bad money. And the guy still walks. I think he's still suing him for the for his payout cut his walk-in fee or whatever like i would just be like hey man i became a billionaire building a house of cards and i'm not going to jail i should just shut up and keep moving on it's just go do something else you got a billion dollars i'm sure you can find something to do with yourself but yeah yeah that was a perfect example right there that we were.

Yeah, you definitely got to prepare. You got to make sure you're transparent and make sure your books are good or at least both sets of books you keep. Wait, what did I say? I don't know what that means. I don't know what that means. But you got to take in, you got to take in, make sure you got it all under control. So what are some other things that people should watch out for or look for? Because in fact, let me run something by my friend and mentor early on in my days,

Forrest Baker. I remember he told me one thing about his board. He had a board and he says, I think he was complaining about one of the guys on the board. And I said, why don't you just get rid of that guy? And he goes, let me tell you something about when you get a board, Chris. He goes, you always want one negative guys on the board. And I said, why don't you just get rid of that guy? And he goes, let me tell you something about when you get a board, Chris. He goes, you always want one negative guy on the board. You want one, you go on a guy on the board who he craps on everything, no matter how good the idea is, he finds what's wrong with it. He goes, because when that guy is right and dead, right, you want to know, because he will save you

millions. And you always, basically you want the, what's the word I'm looking for? You want the contrarian on the board. Not, you don't want the whole board to be contrarian because then they'll just outvote you and remove you. But you don't do that. I don't know. Maybe it's a good idea. As long as your parachute gets paid. He said you always want to have that one guy. Is that true? So that actually covers under diversity, right? It doesn't have to be a guy or a girl. That's really comes down to personality and personalities really come from where we come from, where we were raised at and that what we were surrounded with. So you're always, I think the more diverse the board is, you're going to get, like you said, whatever idea

you come up with, he finds a problem with it. And there's nothing wrong with that. The question is, does he just find a problem with it and give you a solution? Or does he just find a problem and he shuts up and sits behind? So you want somebody that, yes, might find a quote unquote problem, but that is their solution for it. And I always say every problem is not a problem. It's just an opportunity for growth because that's what problems are. If we didn't have any problems, we would never grow. We'd just be the same all the time. Diversity, in my mind, brings that whole concept of when you have a group

of people that come from different, maybe you have somebody that was raised with money, a silver spoon or whatever you call that. And then you have somebody that had to work for it, but they became successful. Those two people are going to have two totally different ideas about how to grow a company or how to solve a problem. One's going to be like, let's just go get $10 million in funding. And the other one's going to be like, no, let's just keep bootstrapping because we're doing good right now. So it doesn't mean one or the other is wrong but the right answer is somewhere in between so the more diversity you have the more different ideas to a problem you're going to come up with and eventually you're going to settle on something probably in between so yes it's good to have a guy like that but it'd be great if he provided some solutions too that's true the one thing i do hate is about people go this isn't going to work

and you're like well how will it work? I don't know. Come on, man. Seriously, do some homework. One of the problems I always had, and I had what I called the virtual board. I turned the virtual board. So I called up all my friends and said, hey, you're an entrepreneur. I'm an entrepreneur.

Let's play virtual board with each other. And let me call you and bounce ideas off you anytime I have them or things I'm considering or major decisions with the corporations. And I'll give you access to the same to me and I'll listen to you and your stupid ideas and you'll listen to mine. And it worked. It worked really well. And since we're all entrepreneurs, we kind of, but I was like, here's the thing, man, you got to be like, butthurt honest with me. You got to tell it to me straight because that was the biggest problem I always had, even with my close business partner of 22 years and a friend of 22 years and business partner of 13,

is you'd be surrounded. And that's what my friend Forrest was trying to say. Don't be surrounded by yes men because they can kill you. And so a lot of times you look at people, like even when I wrote my book recently, and people are like, it's a great book. So what's wrong with it? Tell me the truth.

And you really question. You're like, man, I really need you to tell me the truth. And I use in business one of these principles called looking the dragon in the teeth. And when I have to make a huge decision, I look the dragon in the teeth and I go, what's going to happen if you rip my arm off? What's going to happen? You choose my head off. Can I live with the fallout of whatever bad is going to happen? And then you mitigate. You mitigate and strategize with the fallout of whatever bad's going to happen? And then you mitigate,

you mitigate and strategize for possible fallout. And then that way you have, what's the word I'm looking for? You have countermeasures available to you. When I go to war, you have countermeasures. If you're smart, you just don't go fucking headlong into war because they're going to fire back. So you've got to have your countermeasures in place. They file misses, you file misses, they fire more misses. You got to figure out what you're going to do. And this is funny about people I go to war with. They're always like, you just destroyed everything. You blew up everything around us.

And I'm like, yeah, my countermeasures were in place. I knew you were going to fire back. So I just took you out of that from the start. But that was the biggest problem. As a CEO, I'd look around and I'd be like, are you telling me the truth? Is this idea really that good? Or does it really suck?

Like, you really have to tell me this sucks. Yeah. And sometimes that's where that negative guy on the board helps you is because he goes, this sucks! And you're like, let's listen to that guy a little bit more. Anyway, those are some of my thoughts. Transparency. I definitely, I preach that you really start

getting paranoid sometimes and not necessarily paranoid but you just sometimes you just really feel like people like you i've had people say that to me uh chris you're the ceo you know better than anybody and you're like you have no idea man i don't and i when i'm wrong the shit hits the fan it's expensive like millions of dollars go out the door and when i'm right millions of dollars come in but when i hit a stinker ouch that fucking hurts i'd really like to have less stinkers but such is the nature of business but this is really the thing so does your business is what a lot of your business is because your business is named about a board z is that correct is that largely what you guys consult on and help form and consult yeah so basically we we talk to executives every day we onboard them we add

them to our private network and that's the advantage that companies have working with us because instead of phishing for somebody say on linkedin which by far is the best obviously tool to find people the problem is you're phishing amongst thousands and thousands of executives and you don't even know if they have the time or are available to serve on a board or even want to with us when the company comes to us and tells us exactly. We do the same process. We do an onboarding call. We figure out. We give them ideas.

We figure out where their business is at. And then once we figure out exactly who they're looking for, how many board members, it's a lot easier for us to look in our database, and we can pick out 10 executives that are a perfect fit. So then all they have to do is just go through the interviews. Wow. So do you guys like a headhunter too then? I guess you can say, yeah, people refer to it that way. I don't think of it that way. We do have a platform. So the companies that are okay with us putting their information and who they're looking for on the platform, the executives get to see that. But we also, there's a lot of companies that don't want that, even though it's a private platform, they still don't want to post that

they're looking for a board member. So we still work in the background, looking through the executives and matching them up. That could be probably pretty challenging because people will be like, Hey, the, these guys need a board. What's going on over there? You hit the trades, the wall street journal on there. What's going on over there? You hit the trades, the Wall Street Journal in there. Exactly. What's going on at XYZ Corporation, man? They can't keep board members. People are quitting and they can't find out. What's going on there?

Bob's world. Yeah. What else do we need to touch on? The book is pretty much self-explanatory. I do cover best approaches to building a board. I cover the basics of how many hours are expected to be on the board as you work versus board of advisors. Cover how to present yourself all the way from LinkedIn. That's one thing that actually I'm going to be doing a whole webinar with someone. But it's amazing when we see an executive, they don't really give us any great board documents.

They might give us a CV. But in this day and age, social media, they need to realize that any company, before they even do an interview, they're going to go do their homework. We have a profile on our platform for them, but the companies don't even care about that. They will go on LinkedIn. They'll look at their profile on LinkedIn. They'll go on Facebook, see what kind of activities they're doing, and then might make a decision that they don't even want to interview that person. And then we can't figure out why. And then we go look at it closely and we're like, okay, I get it. So I think it's important to make sure that your LinkedIn is up to date. Make sure that you're not posting something crazy on Facebook that a CEO might not want on their board. So I should take my nude pictures down to my OnlyFans account probably?

Unless you want to be on the board of a housewife, then you're probably good. Oh, there's still time. The board of OnlyFans. There's money in that. Anyway, yeah. Note to self, take my OnlyFans down. Anyway, I think it's already down. Well, Facebook might be down period so don't

well that's usually the case too yeah this is pretty interesting i'm i love that you did this because i've always been worried i'm like very many people offer me a board position i don't really know what i do i'm used to being a ceo so i'd be like i'd be like i don't know do i just sit in the corner and drink coffee and be like yeah charlotte's pretty good man yeah do i Yeah. Do I get to check now? How's this work? I'm glad you brought that up actually, because I did mention that in the book too, because one of the things obviously is egos. And you were talking about the yes people. Those are just like ego amplifiers. Like you said, oh yeah, you're the greatest CEO ever. And it just gets out of whack. And the next thing, they don't listen to anybody because they think they're right so that's a problem but but yeah i talk about the difference on when you join a board whether even

as an advisor or as a board director you're not no longer if you were a ceo prior to that you're no longer a ceo you're there to serve a different purpose yeah yeah and i'm not a good server i'm not i'm not working with others no i actually do I think it would be fun to be a board member. Yeah. I did a stint, I think several years ago when I moved to Las Vegas, I was really burnt out and I saw my mortgage company in Utah and, and someone wanted me to build a mortgage company for them in Vegas. And I was like, this is how nice man, I can use their money and, and it's their company. So if I want to leave someday, I can just, I'm fucking out of here. We can all do this for a little while. And it was fun not. So if I want to leave someday, I can just say, I'm fucking out of here. We all do this for a little while. And it was fun not to be the guy.

I was still the guy. I still had to be the CEO and do the thing. But it wasn't my money. Like, I didn't have to go home at night and go, I wonder if I'm ever going to get that sort of thing that you live with as an entrepreneur. And it was nice to leave at five, too. That was the other amazing thing. I was like, you mean I can just punch out and go home and I can do some other stuff and not think about everything?

It was nice not to have that whole gun to your head, but it only lasted for a few months. The life of an entrepreneur? Yeah. It was fun until they decided they wanted me to start making illegal loans to their family members. And then I was like, yeah, no, we're not doing this. We're out.

No, no. I'm not going to jail for fraudulent loans. No, that're not doing this. We're out. No, no. I'm not going to jail for fraudulent loans. No, that's not happening because the license is in my name, so I'm the one who gets held responsible. I'm like, no, I'm not going to jail for somebody else's family, maybe my family. No, I'm just kidding. I'd never do an illegal loan.

I have this thing where I just don't ever want to go to jail. I don't have an issue that way. It's a thing for me. I don't know how other people feel about it, but I like my freedom. So I wear my seatbelt. I drive the speed limit, try and be a good person. I probably have a long way to get my freedom. That's true, too.

I like to keep it. Your mom's a hero, man. She just came over. And I remember that age, man. When I was a kid, we were watching. There was the movie. There was lots of movies about the wall and people trying to get out of the Eastern Bloc. And I remember, what was the one movie where they did a balloon and they flew over the wall and they were getting shot at.

It was like really fucking insane. It's crazy. So many people died trying to get out of Eastern Bloc countries. And yeah, just really. And many of them died in the countries. That's true, too. That was a real tragedy of it. I remember Neil Peart of Rush wrote when the wall fell in 89.

He said, everyone's celebrating right now, but who's going to be held responsible for the hundreds of thousands and millions of people that died of starvation and sloth and conditions? It's really sad, but I'm glad you're here and you're an American story. Next week we have Fiona Hill on the show. She's an American story. She, her family immigrated here and she ended up working at the white house and Pentagon and state department and other stuff.

These are great stories of the American ideal and we need more. It's funny to me that people like you respect the american ideal of what america is supposed to be sometimes more than some of those lazy americans who were born here and we're just like uh freedom whatever exactly but i always i always compare that you know to the fish in water doesn't know or doesn't even enjoy water because it's always there yeah these yeah i i grew up that way. I'll admit to it. Where you're just kind of like, yeah, freedom.

Everyone's got freedom. I'm the asshole American. It's classic. But yeah, people take it for granted. They don't realize how hard it is and how, and the American dream and how people are willing to die for that. Yeah. And everybody else is just kind of like, oh, whatever, you know, can I watch more TV? But you're like, there's people that, you know, anyway.

So thanks for coming on the show. Give us your plugs one more time so that people can find out more about you and order that book. Absolutely. So the book pre-order at corporatematchmakerbook.com and it will be available on Amazon soon. And it's a thatcorporatematchmaker Also comes with a journal. And as far as the company, if you are interested in joining a board or if your company is in search of board members, it's B-O-A-R-D-S-I.com.

There you go. There you go. Check it out, guys. Thank you very much, Martin, for being on the show. We certainly appreciate it. Thanks, Chris. An American story.

Guys, go check it out. Go to youtube.com Fortress Chris Voss and look up what we're doing over there. Go to goodreads.com Fortress Chris Voss. I'm over there. You'll be able to see his book. We'll probably mark it as what we're reading once we get a hold of it. It'll be on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, all those different places on the

interwebs. Be good to each other. Stay tuned and we'll see you guys next time.