The PXO Podcast

PXO 1 -
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[00:00:44] Mike Richardson: Hello everybody. Welcome to the first episode of the PXO podcast, myself and my co-host Zaid Vakil. Hey Zaid, say hello

[00:00:53] Zed Vakil: h-hello, Mike, and hello everybody

[00:00:55] Mike Richardson: Yeah, it's great to be here. We're excited about this one, and we're actually spinning this one out of some previous episodes we did in a, in another podcast that we do, and we're dedicating this one to everything PXO, which is our way of talking about portfolio careers and portfolio professionals. So if you are considering or are launching or are executing a portfolio career, you are in exactly the right place.

I'm Mike Richardson. Yes, you can tell that I'm English originally, but American now, and for the last 25 years, I've lived here in Temecula Valley wine country in southern California, which is sort of in the triangulation between Palm Springs, San Diego, and Los Angeles. Absolutely gorgeous place to be. And I went portfolio aged 20-- uh, aged 29.

Age 39, uh, back in the spring of, uh, 2002. And, uh, you know, I had an instinct that it was a good i- a good idea and a good thing to do for the rest of my career and the rest of my life. And, uh, now looking back, it's turned out to be a fantastic thing to do, and, uh, I would never go back now. I love, love, love what I do.

I'm doing coaching, facilitating, I'm chairing boards, I'm a member on boards, I run peer forums. I have many roles, I have many revenue streams, and I have one me, if you like. I'm me everywhere I go. I've evolved a brand and a, and a proposition and a positioning and, uh, and the sort of story that, uh, comes with all of that.

And so that's what this show is really all about, uh, this podcast. What does it take to evolve success as a portfolio professional with a portfolio career? Because as we've seen, and we'll talk more about in this podcast, that is a rising tide of a trend. More and more people are doing that pre-COVID, during COVID, post-COVID, and if we're not careful, many of those people are sort of going through it alone.

It can be a lonely journey because it's hard, it's complex, it's, it's, uh, it can be very lonely. so we think, Zed and I think that's a bit silly. There needs to be a place where people can exchange ideas and experiences and insights about how to have a great portfolio life, and that's what this podcast is all about, which brings me to Zed.

Yes, Zaria Vakil goes by the name Zed, and, uh, he and I have known each other for the last five years and, uh, we've done some great things that we'll talk more about. Uh, Zed, please, uh, say hello and introduce yourself.

[00:03:33] Zed Vakil: Thank you very much, Mike. And hello everybody again. It's good to finally be doing th- with this with you, Mike. Um, and thank you for that introduction. Yes, I'm Zed Vakil. I'm coming to you from London, um, which until a few, uh, weeks ago was, uh, having one heat wave after the other, and I'm glad to tell you that as of today it's cooled off a little bit.

I should be used to it 'cause I'm a Kenyan-born, um, person, a British Parsi, and my name, Zarrir, is of ancient Persian origin. Uh, and it, it had Mike, um, uh, rather ironically describe me recently as quintessentially British, which, uh, I thought was quite cool. Uh, and we are both products of our respective and hugely diverse assimilations, uh, which had never really occurred to me before, uh, and has since we've started talking, uh, with each other because this very thing about portfolio life applies to so many people.

And I went portfolio first, Mike, when I could barely spell the word portfolio back in 2001, when I was coincidentally 39 as well. Um, yeah, I know I don't look that old, Mike, but I am as old as you. I had spent the previous decade losing my hair, thankfully not my shirt, uh, as a venture capital partner, seeing businesses through the investor, founder, and owner lens, and that eventually led me to spinning out my own, HR outsourcing consulting practice, which was funded, uh, by my ex-colleagues.

And that quickly morphed into a business growth services business and several interim director appointments. I've spent 30 years plus seeing businesses through that, um, investor, founder, owner lens, and I now advise and navigate and inspire other business leaders, founders, fellow portfolio professionals, fractional executives through a multi-format kaleidoscope of portfolio business activities.

And like Mike, I have a, a, a varied, uh, portfolio of activities. I have a-- I still have a business growth consulting practice and serve as a fractional interim and non-executive director, a certified forum leader with, uh, Mike, uh, you'll hear more about that as we go on, a mentor, speaker, and facilitator. And here's the thing, Mike Um, you and I come at this from completely, genuinely different angles, different countries, diverse personal and business background, which is rather the point.

For n- the, the last nearly three years, we've been co-facilitating our portfolio peer forums together, these personal advisory boards, incidentally, for those of you who don't know what that is, for portfolio professionals. And a lot of what we-- you're gonna hear on this show comes straight out of those rooms.

Well, not completely straight out of those rooms, but the anecdotes come straight out of those rooms. The strategies, yes, but also the stumbles and the surprising economics of a life lived in plural, and something, uh, Mike also mentioned, uh, just now. That's what we mean by an exchange. Not just two blokes telling you how it's done, uh, a genuine trade of experience.

So Mike, shall we tell, uh, the lovely folks listening why we're actually doing this?

[00:06:41] Mike Richardson: I love that. Blokes, that's a very English phrase, everybody.

[00:06:43] Zed Vakil: Yeah, sorry about that.

[00:06:44] Mike Richardson: that. Um, yeah, so we're gonna just quickly here in this first episode, everybody, just do a sort of flyover of the sort of why are we doing this podcast, what's this podcast gonna be focusing on, uh, who will this podcast be for, who will we be inviting as guests, et cetera.

And then sort of how, where, and when can you find the podcast, and the bigger picture of PXO, um, uh, the PXO ecosystem that we're, that we're putting together. So yeah, indeed, let's start with the why, Zed, and, and, and, you know, just compare notes here a little bit. For me, everybody, um, pre-COVID, uh, there was this massive trend already towards more and more people, um, you know, having some kind of midlife crisis, if, if that's what you wanna call it, of their career, uh, and potentially, you know, their life, um, where they started initially perhaps to dream about, you know, could I go independent?

Could I do my own thing? Do I not have to do this corporate thing anymore? And am I able to sort of pivot to do my own thing, to find my own path, to discover my own, um, treasures and my own talents and my own gifts? And certainly, as you heard, coincidentally, both of us, um, were age 39 when we did that. And, uh, I remember distinctly, Zed, that, you know, I'd had two or three years prior to that of thinking it through, and then I eventually decided I'm, I'm going to do this. And as you said in your introduction, that's way before we called it portfolio. Uh, we might have called it, you know, being self-employed or, or, um, going independent or becoming a freelancer or a consultant or something like that. and you know, this word portfolio emerged, you know, progressively over the following couple of decades pre-COVID. And then during COVID, of course, everybody, more and more people, uh, perhaps out of necessity because, you know, of remote working and all of that kind of stuff, um, decided to pivot, um, to portfolio.

And now, you know, post-COVID, Zed, it's, it's, it's accelerating as a, as a rising trend. What, what are the other reasons, Zed, of why we're doing this podcast?

[00:09:20] Zed Vakil: Yeah. Um, look, Mike, and, and for those of you listening, most portfolio professionals I meet and, and have met, um, over the last number of years are those who are brilliant at what they do, absolutely stellar at what they do. But they're very often stuck sometimes between their own ambition, uh, as you mentioned, Mike, the, you know, the, the dream of this portfolio life.

They're stuck between their ambition and their execution. And most I-- most people I encounter, brilliant as I said, need some very, very close steering towards a degree of, um, yes, showing up to this new place, this new ecosystem, but also the commercial realities of this new ecosystem. The proven routes to success that perhaps you and I, Mike, waded through, um, 20-odd years ago, uh, but now have, I, I guess to a certain extent, made repeatable success processes and moved away simply from governance, and compliance, and risk management, and all those things, but to look at how do you make something of your own a success.

And these portfolio careers are very much like starting up a business. And I think the danger that I see often is that people conflate their life and their business together. Now, that's a good thing to a point, but there needs to be some disciplines that apply to businesses that don't apply to life, and vice versa.

And yes, we want to merge them, and yes, we want to find all the benefits of each other, but we must not conflate them. And, and Mike, I'd like to think that we've, um, together helped successfully build a symbiotic, um, second career, if you like, uh, second half career or, or whatever the euphemisms are, by using our expertise, our overlapping skills and activities that actually work.

And this is what we're trying to share now in PXO Exchange, and that is what can we do, what can we bring to the table that allows everybody to work towards their version of success rather than somebody else's?

[00:11:44] Mike Richardson: Yeah. So what are the, what are the success factors, everybody? Uh, what's the success model? Not that the-- not that it's one size fits all by any means. And a couple of other aspects that Zed touched upon, uh, for me about the why we feel compelled to launch this podcast and everything else we're gonna do.

I'm reading a great book right now called "The 100-Year Life," and, um, it was published in 2018, and what the author said, uh, if I get it right, is back in 2018, uh, pre-COVID, um, uh, kids born then had a more than 50% expectation of living till the age 104, and in Japan it's 107, and that was back in 2018, so obviously it's probably, you know, trending a little bit higher since then.

They sort of round that up and call it the 100-year life, and what they basically say is this, that the old approach to life, a three-phase life of education, career, retirement, that doesn't work for a 100-year life because a 40-year career doesn't fund a 40-year retirement. And so what the book is saying is you will have no option except to have a long tail to your career, and because ageism is still a factor, inevitably it's going to be a portfolio tail to your career.

So one of the things that I like to say to people is it's not if you will have a portfolio career, it's only when. And secondly, um, one of my favorite, uh, people to listen to on podcasts and read books for is Chip Conley, and he has a podcast called "Midlife Chrysalis," not midlife crisis, but "Midlife Chrysalis," and it's all about midlife, you know, which who knows could, could be your 20s, your 30s, your 40s, your 50s, your 60s, your 70s.

I mean, there's no precise definition. But going through that transformation, going through that process of morphing from one thing into another and giving birth to something new, uh, that can, you know, fly, uh, for the rest of your life and your career. So that's more about the why, uh, from my point of view, is that this, these convergences are just meaning that this is going to be an exploding trend of more and more people trying to figure out how do I launch a portfolio career?

How do I become a portfolio professional? What else would you throw on the fire there, Zed?

[00:14:27] Zed Vakil: I'd say that's a great segue, Mike, to talk about what we will be focusing on, on this podcast. And, you know, these, um, uh, you know, I, I don't say it lightly, I, I, I actually see it as a real virtue that the lessons that we and others have learnt along the way, that we've learnt from other people, and crafting this sustainable new portfolio, um, foundation, if you like, with peer-to-peer insights, with anecdotes.

We'll also have some fun, uh, Mike. Uh, I, I think it would be, um, uh, remiss not to have a bit of fun along the way. But the serious message here is that there's something, um, brewing, uh, Mike, about the portfolio life, about what we have monikered PXO, uh, in this exchange. And I think the, um, you know, a- as we open up, um, the dialogue during this, uh, or this conversation during this podcast, we will talk about our manifesto for the PXO exchange and, and how that will bring, uh, those lessons, those learnings, those insights, uh, from our, uh, experiences, uh, the last 20, 25 years, so that maybe it will help you, um, design and make successful your own sustainable portfolio life.

Mike, just, uh, add on that

[00:15:45] Mike Richardson: Yeah, and we, we're playing with the idea, everybody, this PXO idea plays off, you know, we often use the phrase CXO to describe the different kind of C-level senior leadership roles in a, in a corporation. The, the CEO, the, the s- the chief marketing officer, the chief HR officer, the chief sales or revenue officer.

So we use this CXO, and we're just using that in a similar way to describe, you know, portfolio professionals with PXO, because actually there are so many different ways of describing the X. Uh, some people call themselves self-employed, some people call themselves freelancers, some people call themselves poly workers or fractional consultants or interims or, or, um, you know, other things along those like gig workers and things like that.

So there's so many different X's that people use, it can actually be quite confusing and confounding. And so we just want to embrace that, um, that complexity and sort of, you know, use PXO in the same way that we use CXO. And, uh, yeah, indeed, we'll, we'll be sharing from our direct experiences and insights.

We'll be bringing guests on who are practitioners and/or thought leaders and/or authors to share their perspectives. And, and gradually we will work our way through kind of the A to Z of, you know, everything that it takes to be successful and the kind of success factors and the success model, what we call, of course, the outer journey of strategies and tactics, but also the inner journey of discovery and, and identity and, you know, developing a personal brand and all of those kinds of things.

And, um, one of the other why's, Ed, is, is, you know, we were both founding members of an organization called The Portfolio Collective, TPC. Um, we got very excited about that back in sort of 2020, 2021, and, and, um, bless them, um, TPC was quite successful, um, I think got to about 15,000 members, um, globally, but unfortunately couldn't really break through and make it stick, and it has, has sort of wound up now, and that just leaves a massive void, and not that we're gonna try to fill it in the same way, uh, but we certainly feel like, uh, there's a void here that needs to be filled in some kind of way, and this is the beginnings of us doing that.

, What else would you add in the mix there,

[00:18:26] Zed Vakil: Indeed. And I, and I think if you're, y- you know, if, if you're someone listening who's considering, uh, this seriously, you're currently in a corporate, uh, role, uh, you're thinking about maybe launching it on the side or executing fully a portfolio career, then the point Mike made earlier on about the X in the PXO is actually the point, that we don't actually, uh, feel that people necessarily need to have this, um, you know, uh, job title as such, because their job title is going to become what they do.

Like I, you heard me say when we started, that I do many, many things, as does Mike. Uh, and it, it's actually very, very difficult to give yourself a, you know, two-word, three-word job title. And I think it's quite useful, Mike, that we've invented this, uh, moniker PXO to help us along, because actually it is a confusing plethora of, um, you know, m- m- mash names, if I can use a, a, a, a, a term, that doesn't really work.

And, you know, if, if PXO can save our breath a little bit and we, we gang up and make sure that people don't feel that this is all about, you know, determining what their job title is, but more determining what they can offer their p- prospective clients and, and, uh, make use and leverage their skills, expertise, and their wheelhouse if you like, so much the better.

So, this podcast is for you if you feel that that is, uh, how, uh, you might want to describe yourself.

[00:20:00] Mike Richardson: Yeah, and you'll hear us say it repeatedly, everybody, if you're, if you're, if you're dreaming about, if you're starting to think seriously about, if you're now seriously considering, uh, you know, uh, and/or you're already launching and/or you're already executing a portfolio career as a portfolio professional, PXO, in whatever way, shape, or form you describe that, then this podcast is for you.

And not only this podcast. So let's talk a little bit about how, where, and when, uh, we're gonna be busy with all of this, Zed. Obviously, we're gonna doing pod- doing these podcast episodes every, you know, two or three weeks or so. But also, everybody, we are launching a bigger ecosystem. We're gonna-- inside of LinkedIn initially.

Uh, we have a LinkedIn company page, we have a LinkedIn group, we have a LinkedIn newsletter. Uh, we'll be posting a lot in LinkedIn. We'll be writing articles in LinkedIn, et cetera, to expand the kind of ecosystem. And you'll be able to find the podcast, you know, via LinkedIn and also, of course, at its own, uh, landing page, uh, which is, uh, pxo.global.

Um, and, uh, other links, Zed, around, not least of all, the portfolio peer forums. Why don't you talk a little bit about that, what we've been up to for the last two or three years?

[00:21:22] Zed Vakil: Yeah, I think that's, that's quite important and, and somewhere which again is a, a ca- I guess a much more of a deep dive. So as you get to learn about PXO, as you get to learn about peer-to-peer, uh, forums, uh, and peer-to-peer work, I think the, um, uh, portfoliopeerforums.co.uk might be worth a look. Uh, this is where we, Mike and I, co-facilitate a, um, if you like, a personal advisory board for portfolio peer fo- uh, portfolio professionals to come together, uh, each month for a couple of hours and actually, um, have a fairly fa- well-facilitated, strictly facilitated case processing, uh, where each member brings a case each month and we look at that in detail in a form of hall of mirrors because actually everything that we're all doing has a common thread that runs through all our work.

And it is quite breathtaking, uh, Mike, is it not? That from time to time, the, the, you know, the humility that people, um, expose in their case processing means that the rest of us are equally humbled by them sharing something that we know deep down applies to us as well. Um, so I think, um, the other, the other thing I should mention is that during this time we are also looking at how, uh, the, the practical nature of this, how it is we can get, uh, accelerated, performance acceleration if you like, to get perform- uh, portfolio professionals having the same outcomes and professional outcomes that you might have experienced in your other, uh, career.

Um, so, um, for example, Mike and I are working on a, what is it, Mike now? Twenty modules of an AI-augmented, uh, tool which we will begin to drip out, uh, as we, uh, beta run, uh, each module, um, for members of the portfolio peer forums to experience for themselves how you can go from, uh, A to Z much quicker than you used to be able to do simply by leveraging AI for all its positive a- attributes.

[00:23:35] Mike Richardson: Indeed, everybody. So we're gonna be as, you know, in addition to everything we've already mentioned as part of this ecosystem that we call PXO Exchange, um, there'll be an AI-enabled platform, there'll be webinars, there'll be booklets and e-books and, and, you know, proper books progressively. We, we really want to fill this void and help more and more people have more and more access to, um, the insights, the experiences, the, the, the lessons that people have already learned, uh, the hard way so that, uh, other portfolio professionals coming along behind don't have to relearn those same lessons.

Um, and so that's our commitment. We're really excited about doing this. We're gonna progressively unfold, you know, a, a sort of activity of daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, annual, um, activity that you'll see through that LinkedIn ecosystem. And we're excited to explore this, uh, Zed, and, uh, and really evolve and accumulate and compound over time, you know, a body of wisdom, everybody, about what it takes to be a successful portfolio professional with a portfolio career.

I don't know about you, Zed, but I, um, I have a greater sense of prosperity now. Uh, and the way I think about that is I think about an integration of success and happiness financially and non-financially all orbiting around my sense of passionate purpose. I have a greater sense of prosperity now than I've ever had before.

How about you, Zed?

[00:25:18] Zed Vakil: Boy, I can't agree with you more, Mike. You're talking to someone here who was once described as Dracula by a neighbor. And when I asked, uh, this guy, who happened to be called Mike, believe it or not, " Why are you calling me Dracula?" He goes, "I only ever see you in the dark." And, you know, you go from that sort of situation where it's corporate, very long hours, um, and, uh, you know, being dreadfully unhappy actually i- in, in, in the lifestyle.

Yes, the, the financial lifestyle... The financials were very good, the lifestyle was extremely poor. And therefore, I think I couldn't agree with you more. You know, the, the way... Uh, but, but it's not easy, and this is part of the reason why this podcast will become more and more important. We have to share the mistakes that we make as well as the successes that we have.

But absolutely, do I feel a, a better sense of prosperity? Absolutely. Am I any richer? Maybe not. Uh, but am I richer in life? Absolutely. Um, and that, that is without question, and I very much wish that on everybody else, and those of you who are listening, uh, to be able to achieve in, in a not too, uh, long a period of time.

[00:26:33] Mike Richardson: Beautiful. So there we have it, everybody. That's episode one of the PXO podcast. Uh, um, hopefully, uh, we'll see you down the road here as we accumulate more and more and more, and look out for the links in the show notes that will take you to the bigger ecosystem. Uh, and, uh, we'll be seeing you in future episodes, everybody.

Thanks for being here. Thanks, Zed

[00:26:54] Zed Vakil: Thanks, Mike, and bye everybody