Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “I’m Stepping Down..”.
Most successful companies eventually outgrow the leadership of their Founders, and it looks like my time is now effective July, 1st 2023, after 10 wilds and very eventful years. I will be stepping down as CEO of Linus Media Group, Creator warehouse and float plane media. I’M sure you have a lot of questions and I’m gon na try to answer them all here like why now, what’s going to happen to the channels in the lab, and if not you who’s going to be around to tell us about our sponsor the ridge Father’s Day is coming up. Luckily, Ridge is having one of their biggest sales of the Year, give the dads in your life a unique and functional Ridge, wallet or key case.
So they can do dad things like brag about their wallet and keys check the ridge out of the link below and make Dad proud. The truth is, I was never really cut out to be a CEO. I remember putting it on my business cards in the early days when we had only four employees thinking.
This feels ridiculous and I’ve never really outgrown that. I’M a lot of things, I’m a bottomless pit of Creative Energy, an excellent motivator and speaker. I’M wicked smart, Charming really funny, but in addition to those strengths, both real and imagined, I have a lot of weaknesses and chief among them is that I’ve just never really had the attention to detail or the temperament that it takes to run an organization this large. I touched on some of this during my Infamous 10 million subscriber stream, but the truth is, while I did manage to wrap that up with a positive message about finding motivation to move forward.
None of those feelings I talked about ever went away. I wasn’t built for this and I’m tired, like really can’t do this anymore, tired and if I try to drag myself through another 10 years of business administration. I know I’m gon na destroy myself and probably end up killing the company and the community that I love. So much in the process, I’m at my best when I’m pitching new content or product ideas or when I’m problem solving ways to wipe garbage sites like user Benchmark out once and for all, and I have some good news: none of that stuff is going to be Going away, my new role is going to be Chief Vision officer, which is a stupid like BS sounding made-up role. But I I think it really is the best one. We thought about creative officer, but that didn’t really Encompass what I’m going to be responsible for, because my gut and principles are what got us to where we are today.
So I’m still going to be charting the path that I think makes sense. We don’t want to lose our moral compass, but when it comes to the details of how to best utilize our resources to get there, I need some help. I’M sure you have a lot of questions right now like who our second sponsor is. I’M just kidding we’re going to get to that later. First, I want to talk about what isn’t? Did I really write that sorry? First, I want to talk about what isn’t going to change and the biggest one is the rest of our leadership. Team Yvonne and I spent the last six months, working with them on my replacement, which included having him work for us on a contract basis to ensure that they feel he is a a competent manager and B the kind of person who can comfortably integrate into our Team they are going to be continuing to work alongside him to ensure that this transition goes as smoothly as possible.
The next thing that isn’t going to change is me: I am not going away. You can expect to see me on camera just as much as you used to I mean, ideally, maybe more since, if all goes according to plan, I’m going to be left to do what I do best, which is engage with our community. That’S you and create speaking of which I’m going to be doing a q, a session about this with the community in the next week or so make sure you’re signed up at floatplane.com LTT. So you don’t miss it. Also, not changing our ownership structure.
Yvonne and I are still the sole shareholders and directors of the company, so there hasn’t been some kind of corporate buyout. That’S going to force us to sell our souls to cover their purchase investment. We did have a substantial offer recently to sell out and I might as well speak plainly. The offer was a hundred million dollars. Sixty percent cash 40 shares in the acquiring company. Basically, it was enough to live in a beachfront hotel for the rest of our lives. For our kids to do that and for our kids kids to do the same, we decided not to take it, and there were a few reasons for that. First, is that, honestly speaking, it wouldn’t really change our lifestyle. Much I mean what are we going to do? Buy an even bigger house, an even faster car, I mean that’s, never really been us anyway. Second is because we love this company and the people in it, and I just I just don’t think our mission’s complete, yet I’m not sure that it will ever be. My point is just that our attitude towards money so make lots of it and keep reinvesting and building this thing to do even better.
It’S not going to change and you’re not going to see the kind of short-term thinking that comes from investor pressure. Our long-term thinking is just going to come from this guy instead. On that note, then, let’s talk about what does change, and this is actually mostly for the benefit of my team who’s watching this, but you guys might as well be in on it. The biggest change is in reporting.
No one will report directly into me anymore. If there’s an issue with salary, transparency or the snacks in the lunchroom or the warranty on the backpack or whatever I promise you. I give you my personal guarantee, trust me bro whatever it is, there is somebody else, who’s in charge of that, and that is by Design Yvonne, and I have laid out a clear set of guidelines for how we want this company handled with integrity and compassion people.
First, we want to make strong investments in building something that’s going to continue to offer growth opportunities to everyone who’s part of our team. Beyond that, though, the buck stops with the new CEO, I’m not going to be stepping in to undermine him, and this is a big shift. That’S going to mean we’re all going to need to break some really old habits with that out of the way, then, who the hell is this guy right? The key night among you might have noticed that the picture I showed you is actually from the roast.
A few years back, so this isn’t your first exposure to Mr Taran Tong. He was my boss when I worked at NCIX, which makes him kind of uniquely qualified for this position, because managing me is a challenging task. I am everywhere. Even the most skilled of Administrators have struggled with it and he’s one of the only people to ever successfully do that in and teach me he and I mean, if, I’m being honest, really one of our other colleagues begrudging shout out to Jack the two of them Taught me most of what I know about business, both what to do and what not to do shout out Jack in the years since his departure from NCIX Taryn has done stints at Corsair and Dell, both of which have been successful enough that they’ve thwarted. All of my previous attempts to hire him seriously since pretty much day. One I’ve been looking for an excuse for us to work together again and every single time.
I would talk to him. He was worth so much more than the last time that I’d go and I guess we’re not really ready for this yet, but now that the deal is Inked, I’m really excited. I’M excited to work with my friend again. I’M excited to have a steady hand that I can trust on the tiller of this ship a second Steady Hand.
I haven’t forgotten about Yvonne who’s. The only reason I’ve lasted this long at all, and I’m also excited about the mentorship that he can provide to me again and also to the rest of our team. We are headed into a really exciting new chapter, guys better videos, better products, new Investments that are going to make us just the Primo source of tech information on the web, I’m sure of it. Now I don’t want to say too much more about him for now.
Once he’s onboarded, I’m sure he’s going to want to prepare a little thing to talk to you guys about. You know: it’d be kind of fun. Should I interview him? Is that as funny as I think it is, you know it doesn’t matter, we’ll figure it out? In the meantime, I can assure you that he is zero.
He’S a super hard working guy with great attention to detail and not only a ton of experience in the computer industry. He actually has a background in media as well. He formally wrote at Neo Seeker if you want to go, dig up some of his old articles for fun. Sorry, Taryn, sorry for bringing that up and sorry for turning your introduction here into this segue to our sponsor Micro Center. This summer marks the opening of their first store in eight years in Indianapolis, with two more stores set to open by 2025, and if you visit the Indianapolis store, you can get a free 128 gig flash drive just for stopping by.
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I had to just download a transcript, it’s just rough, but it might give you guys a better idea of the headspace that ultimately led me to give up the reins so that I can focus just on my love of tech and bringing you guys the best content That I can .