The Peering Podcast

Episode 6
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[00:00:36] Mike Richardson: Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of the Peering podcast. I'm really excited today that we are launching a sort of lane of episodes inside of the Peering podcast that we're gonna call portfolio Conversations. And these portfolio conversations are gonna be co-hosted with me and my very, very, very good friend, Zed, or Zaria, known as Zed Vail.

Uh, hey, Zed. Say hello.

[00:01:05] Zed Vakil: Hello everybody. Um, lovely to be with you here, Mike, and I'm so excited about the start of this podcast series. I think we've got a lot to share, uh, and hopefully something that our listeners can grab hold of.

[00:01:18] Mike Richardson: Yeah, so everybody, you know, the Peering podcast, the best way to see the future is to peer into it together, and Zed and I in this series of podcasts around portfolio conversations, we will be peering into the future of portfolio careers and portfolio professionals. And, uh, we'll explain that word portfolio as we go along here.

Uh, Zed and I have been doing this for a little while. Zed has been portfolio for 15 years or so. I've been portfolio for 25 years or so. And so yeah, we're wiping the sweat off our brow. We've got 40 years of combined experience that we're looking forward to bringing to this table. let's start off Zed with how on earth did you and I meet?

And by the way, we should tell everybody yes, we've got. Two English accents here. Kinder Zeds is a pure English accent. It's beautiful. It really is. It's gorgeous. Mine is a sort of mangled Mid-Atlantic. I'm so confused English accent. But, uh, we're about to hear Zeds again. Zed. How, how on earth did you and I meet.

[00:02:28] Zed Vakil: Thanks for that, Mike. You're very kind. like a lot of portfolio professionals, we went looking for stuff, uh, post pandemic. Uh, I know we met at a. virtual platform called the portfolio Collective, TPC. Uh, I think I was making a habit of that time of not just meeting people on the platform, but then encouraging 'em to go for one-to-one, after which, which you kindly, uh, took up my offer.

And, uh, we got going and had a chat probably, maybe nearly four years ago now, actually, Mike. Um, and, uh, that's where we met.

[00:03:00] Mike Richardson: Yeah, so there's, uh, there's this, uh, global organization, everybody, global community called TPC, the Portfolio Collective. I'll tell my story a little bit Zed, and then perhaps you tell yours. So, you know, I, I've been portfolio for 25 years, but actually I took a three year break from 2018 to 2021 and I went back and ran a global company again.

Not least of all because of COVID, that turned into the agility case study that I was looking for times 10. So I pivoted back from that late 2021 and in between times in those three years. Uh, I reconnected with a gentleman that I'd been coaching beforehand who wasn't happy in his corporate career.

He wasn't being successful and I'd been talking to him, you know, pre 2018. Well, have you ever considered, you know, going portfolio and of course. Most people's response to that is what is portfolio, uh, and what we've mean, of course is going independent and building a portfolio of activities, boards, facilitation, coaching, consulting, mentoring, et cetera, et cetera.

Anyway, um, I had a glass of wine with this gentleman, uh, late 2021 as I pivoted back from. Running that global company again. And, lo and behold, in between times in those three years, he had gone portfolio and he was being phenomenally successful. I, I was, I was floored with how successful he was being.

[00:04:39] Zed Vakil: Yeah.

[00:04:39] Mike Richardson: So as I'm driving back. You know, here we are, late 2021 in a post COVID almost. We are emerging from COVID world where all of our heads are in the space of online everything and communities and all that kind of stuff. And I'm driving back thinking, I wonder if anybody's put up a community for people considering launching or executing portfolio careers, because if they haven't, I will.

Five minutes of Googling later, I came across TPC, the portfolio collective found the CEO Ben Leg and, uh, messaged him and hopped on a call. how did you run across TPCZ?

[00:05:22] Zed Vakil: And the rest is history. Um, yeah, um, not dissimilar. I, I am having spent much of the 2010s. Almost by default after a corporate and venture capital, career. During the 2010s, I, I pivoted to a portfolio career and I was, uh, ostensibly an interim fractional director. Had some non-executive directorships right up to, COVID and then during COVID, as we all were sitting at home wondering what was coming next.

I had a chance, um, phone call with that same ben leg, of TPC, who. Approached me to looking for a reference for someone who wanted to employ, that I used to employ. We got talking. It was quite evident that I was, I was having a portfolio career, even though by that time I was not calling it a portfolio career.

And as a result of that, I think of the early stages, I offered to help Ben with a couple of his, uh, uh, original pitches and um, uh, presentations too. This community, uh, of TPC and, uh, yes, the rest is history. That's, really where my, um, start to, uh, life with TPC uh, began. much the same as yours. Uh, and that's where we met.

[00:06:36] Mike Richardson: yeah. And you know, we'll come back to this later, everybody, but the, the, the research, the data, the statistics show undeniably, not surprisingly either, that there is a rising tide, a massive trend of more and more and more people. Going portfolio, taking the leap from their corporate career and going and building themselves a portfolio career.

Uh, we'll come back to that. And so that's why, you know, Zed and I are so passionate. About portfolio careers and portfolio professionals and how they navigate their pathway to success. And that's what, that's what this portfolio Conversations podcast stream will be all about. But let's, uh, let's double click a little bit more.

Zed, first of all, why don't you tell us a little bit more about what's in your portfolio today? What are you up to? What irons have you got in, what fires as part of your portfolio business model?

[00:07:36] Zed Vakil: Yes. Um, and, and, and as you know, Mike, I, I, uh, refer to myself as a multi-format business growth partner, and that's really come about with a lot of soul searching about what it was, uh, that met with my passionate purpose. And maybe that's something we talk about at some stage that at this, uh, let's call it the last quarter, uh, of my life.

[00:08:00] Mike Richardson: That's being polite everybody.

[00:08:02] Zed Vakil: Kindly, I would wanna be doing stuff that really meant something to me, something that I could not, not do. And so I pivoted my original consulting business, um, into something which was a little bit more nimble. So I do have a, uh, business growth, um, consultancy, a a boutique consultancy where, where most of you would imagine how a consultant would operate on a day rate or day rate, et cetera.

But that wasn't good enough when I was coming across legions of prospective clients, be principally because of COVID, who were very talented, hadn't started businesses, didn't know the first step of starting a business, and clearly. Asking them to put down an investment in consulting was too much. And this is like you, um, Mike, where I started wondering about the next things that I needed to look for.

I was very, very lucky to come across you and your introduction to, uh, put, um, uh, ref in terms of the peer-to-peer forum. Format and, uh, we'll talk more, I'm sure about portfolio peer forums, uh, shortly. But in my bucket of things, now that I do, I'm a peer-to-peer forum leader. So I, I run a consulting firm.

I'm a peer-to-peer forum leader. I also do master classes because I wanted to, um, productize, if you like, what I was doing, uh, and make it easy, um, to, um, access to those people I mentioned. Earlier on, I also still, um, do some mentoring, non-executive directorships. And I would love to start forming a little bit of my model into speaking and facilitation generally.

[00:09:45] Mike Richardson: yeah, yeah. Beautiful. Great start. And, and by the way, everybody, you know, like any other field, you know, if you're talking about coaching or mentoring or training. Or consulting, you have to be quite precise with your language because in this domain of knowledge work that we're both in, you know, those words mean different things.

Um, and it's the same with portfolio. Um, there are many other words in a similar bucket, right? We not, we might talk about solopreneur. Right. We might talk about independent consultant, we might talk about fractional consultant. Um, we might talk about someone that's building a small firm, uh, where they've got, you know, a small number of people.

Obviously, if, if that firm grows and grows and grows, then they're back in the, they're back in the real deal of running a, you know, a, a significant business again. So there's all kinds of, uh, uh, other phraseology that people might come across. Another is multihyphenate, um, uh, you just said multi-format.

[00:10:54] Zed Vakil: Correct.

[00:10:54] Mike Richardson: we're gonna put all of those things, everybody in the generalized bucket that we're gonna call portfolio professionals, portfolio careers, uh, but we will touch upon these other phraseologies as we and vocabularies as we, as we go along here.

And, um, yeah, we're really, we're really here to help people navigate that pathway to success. 'cause it's not easy. And we'll come back to that a little bit more. Zed, what are you able to draw upon from your career? You mentioned it briefly, but tell us a little bit more about how did you get here?

[00:11:34] Zed Vakil: Who knows? Uh, yeah. Wow. How, how far back do you want me to go? Um, look, I, uh, had a wonderful, wonderful corporate career that started off my, uh, my working life. I had no idea that everybody didn't have such brilliant bosses who allow them to do the most amazing things in my early twenties. That frankly, I don't think.

Courage to allow a 23-year-old to get, get their hands stuck into, but they did, and it was very formative for me. Uh, I spent roughly, um, 10 years in, in corporate, uh, life. I worked for very large organizations like, uh, BAT at that time, BAT industries as it was known at that time. And then GKN and I was always in fast moving subsidiaries, so they had the feel.

A startup if you like, albeit we were looking at telephone numbers and not small numbers. Um, and that was very formative. I then took a big, big risk with a few mates and we decided we'd started a small investment management, um, operation, if you like. We never knew that that was gonna turn into a venture capital company and I spent 15 years there losing my hair, but making quite a bit money.

[00:12:56] Mike Richardson: Will notice I have a lot Gray actually decided.

[00:13:06] Zed Vakil: So the venture capital company, having thought it was a little bit of, and boy, when I look back, what a big, big change that was going from, uh, ven, uh, going from a corporate life into a venture capital life. That was a big change. And actually the first change for me there from corporate into SME, uh, if you like, and that was extraordinary formative.

I ended up with, um, being a portfolio director for. Dozens of companies. At peak, we would have about 36 to 40 companies, uh, in, uh, under management and, um.

[00:13:41] Mike Richardson: In your investment portfolio.

[00:13:43] Zed Vakil: In, in the investment portfolio and we, we, each of us, I think the hybrid and that, again, very formative part of my career, the hybrid was that we got our shared sleeves rolled up.

We only got paid by our investee companies and we had to. Provide value for that. So as a consequence, each partner was responsible for half a dozen companies at any one time, um, and had to roll their shirt, sleeves up and do a job. Um, so it wasn't a case of sitting in a shiny mayfair office and, uh.

Looking at spreadsheets, it was very much an operate o operator role, uh, that we had to take. And the biggest investment there that was under my charge was, um, and, and those of you who might be listening in the US will know New Horizons, computer learning centers. Uh, I was responsible in my group for purchasing the master franchise to bring it over the water.

To the UK and Ireland. Uh, that was one of our biggest investments and actually one of our most successful ones, uh, ran that for about four years until, until its exit. And at that point I decided I had got the bug, the entrepreneur, or BII wanted to do something for myself. So I actually asked my, my, my partners, whether they would seed fund me and allow me to go away and run my own thing.

And that's exactly what I did. I, I, I decided to move on, start my own consulting firm. At first it was, um, really an HR outsourcing pure play, uh, until I discovered that a lot of the founders who were my clients, um, were asking me for business advice. So it kind of morphed into business consultancy because of. Um, and yeah, and, and that took me through into various things, right up to, um, actually, uh, the point where of my clients decided to make me an offer. I couldn't refuse to join their board. So I packed up my clients, sold my clients, all on, kept my brand. And the result of that is I, I ventured back a bit like yourself.

Uh, Mike ventured back into corporate life and worked, uh, a couple of years each in insurance outsourcing. Uh, private healthcare and finally private banking. And I'd finally might arrived at my shiny Mayfair office, in this private bank, only for the financial crash to spoil everything.

[00:16:02] Mike Richardson: my gosh.

[00:16:03] Zed Vakil: Yes. Uh, so by 2010 I was out there.

I'd spent a couple of years there, sort of twiddling my thumbs for the last year actually. Um, and the, the consequence of that is I had, like a lot of people was forced into a situation of what do I do next? And that's when I really first went into, um, what we now call my portfolio career, what I then just called a gun for hire.

I would, I would go into companies on principally on referral, uh, and fix stuff.

[00:16:31] Mike Richardson: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And, and some good things are coming up already, everybody. So, number one, you know, Zed has been mired in the concept of portfolio, uh, all the way back into his, um, investment, uh, venture capital days. Uh, and probably before that in his corporate days, like I was right in my corporate days, I ran the air.

I ended up running the aerospace division of a British public company where I had a portfolio of. Different technologies and different products and different services that we pulled into an overarching. Integrated systems concept. And, and that was a paradigm shifting approach and went to market with, so it, it was no longer a loose collection of, of bits and pieces.

It was a type collection of, you know, a, a systemic solution. And we'll come back to that. That's the first thing. Second thing is you, you just heard Zed sort of explain that, you know, uh, the rug got pulled out from underneath him. With the f the great, you know, recession in 2000 7, 8, 9, and you know, therefore, you know, to some degree, um, no doubt you were already preconditioned zed to see the door open in front of you towards a portfolio existence.

Um, but you know, the same happened with me. Um, you know, I was running that aerospace division. I'd, I'd arrived in San Diego, um, in the summer of 2000. I had two years left on my work permit. Um, I, I went into a cold sweat, um, because we'd previously, we'd lived in Kansas for two years and, and I'd never really thought about staying in Kansas.

We would've gone back to the UK when my, when my work permit timed out. But having arrived in San Diego with two years left, I went into a cold sweat. 'cause we would love to stay in San Diego. I wish I'd started my green card process two years prior. Fortunately, um, we were able to, uh, get support from the corporation and the legal team to say, oh, no, no, no, we can still get this done.

And I was very lucky in that I got my green card two months before nine 11. Um, in, you know, uh, September. Um, so I got my green card in in July, you know, 2001 compared to September, 2001. And, and, and therefore, um, you know, everything tanked, right? 'cause not only did nine 11 happen, the markets had crashed.

the.com bubble had burst. The corporate share price had gone from a peak to a trough. And, uh, you know, I decided, okay, this is my, this is my exit. I'm gonna take the leap and I'm gonna do my own thing. Because I, you know, in the prior, um. 12 years that I'd been married, I had been woefully absent as a father and a husband because I was traveling the world like a maniac, serving the global, you know, airline and aerospace and defense, uh, businesses.

And so where this brings us to everybody is it brings us to this sort of readiness.

[00:19:44] Zed Vakil: that's a story you often hear, don't you? Especially of men having been, you know, absent parents.

[00:19:50] Mike Richardson: so it brings us, brings us around everybody to this kind of readiness, um, uh, for portfolio. In fact, one of the things I like to say, since I've been involved, you know, in the portfolio collective and developed a little bit of a shtick around this, what I say to people is it's not if you will have a portfolio career, it's only when, because even if you stick with your corporate career until you know a step function, retirement age 67.

You hear so many stories, don't you? Zed of, well, three months later, that person is now saying things like, I'm bored to tears. I can only play so much golf. You know, I wonder if I could volunteer. I wonder if I could mentor. I wonder if I could teach. I wonder if I could coach. I wonder if I could consult.

And, um, what I say to people at that point is, whoa, those are really cool questions. Just a real shame. You waited until age 67 to start asking them. What if you'd ask those questions? Age 62. Age 57. Age

[00:20:57] Zed Vakil: Hmm.

[00:20:58] Mike Richardson: when, yeah, you still had your day job, your corporate career, but you could have been spooling up your thought process and perhaps got on some boards, got involved with a business school, um, did some other kind of volunteering that was spooling up this portfolio track alongside your day job, track of your corporate career, so that when you are ready to transition, which.

To inevitable at some point. You've already got some things in motion. What are your additional thoughts about all of that?

[00:21:28] Zed Vakil: Yeah. Uh, you know, look, perfection and, and, and, um, looking back retrospectively can be easy in hindsight, but, you know, at the time, and I put myself in this, you know, I wish I had. Leverage my network more. I wish I'd spooled up something earlier, et cetera. So we, we, we are where we are, I guess in our, in our careers and our, and our lives.

And I think the important thing is that, uh, and I say this in my shtick, uh, Mike, um, that there is no. Um, there, there is no guarantee that as you leave, um, your corporate life or as you, you leave a corporate job, you are necessarily then deserving of a portfolio career. You have to work at it, and the, the consequence of the, the people that I see who actually very humbly ask themselves and ask others, how does this thing work?

And where do I get the best information to start a portfolio career? And what are the things that I have to do to make sure that I'm not sitting in a year's time scratching my head, wondering why nothing is happening when I frankly didn't put the foundations down to make sure that they were happening?

And I think, so there's a kind of a before and after that we, we, we can perhaps talk about in, in this

[00:22:51] Mike Richardson: Yeah. You know, I say all the time, you know, I, I left, I left my corporate job on, I think it was Friday, March 31st, 2002. I think that was, I think that was the date. Maybe it's slightly off. And, um, you know, I, I walked out, you know, uh, that Friday afternoon, um, on that Friday, I was somebody. I was a corporate guy, I was a senior guy.

Um, you know, I, I, you know, had a track record. I have had a reputation. I had some accomplishments. Uh, so on the Friday, I was somebody on the Monday. I was nobody. I was just another person trying to be successful as a, you know, consultant, coach, trainer, mentor, facilitator, you name it. I try not to call myself a consultant.

We'll, we'll come back to that for, for many reasons. Um, so, uh, great conversation in the beginning, beginning here. And this is why everybody, we, we wanted to start this, um, subset. Of the peering podcast that we're calling portfolio conversations. 'cause there's a lot to talk about. There really is a lot to talk about in terms of, you know, Z's experience, uh, of, of how he's been successful.

My experience, you know, there isn't a one size fits all by any means. Um, one of the reasons why Zed and I had a meeting of minds. When we got involved, each of us in the portfolio collective, and we started running into each other, and then we had the one-to-one call that Zed mentioned, and we had two or three of those, and we, we arrived at this, this meeting of minds that, that finding a, a successful pathway with a portfolio career is hard.

It's complex and it's lonely. Um, showing up for the odd networking session, the odd webinar, the odd, you know, little training class as part of a bigger community just wasn't doing it for us because those engagements tend to be fairly limited, fairly fleeting, and fairly shallow. And so we kind of arrived at a mutual place together, a meeting of minds that there's something missing here.

There's a void that we need to fill of a deeper ongoing, um, engagement that's got some continuity to it. And so we launched. Portfolio peer forums. Uh, um, as you heard, Zed is involved with REF previously Renaissance executive forums subsequently rebranded to REF Ref in the uk. I've been involved with REF and before that.

Other peer group organizations for a couple of decades already, and so we arrived at the meeting of minds of let's do a peer forum specifically for portfolio professionals who are trying to find their way. We've been doing it for now, what, Z? Two years?

[00:25:57] Zed Vakil: Maybe a bit longer than that because we ran some pilots and, uh, whatnot. Yeah.

[00:26:02] Mike Richardson: And so we have, um, you know, a, a forum of of of, of pro portfolio professionals that get together once a month virtually for a couple of hours. And we take it through a structured flow. But what it means is that we. Are driving a lot of conversations around portfolio and what does it take to be successful.

And that's what this stream of the podcast is going to be about. It's gonna be about unfolding those kinds of conversations about the reality check of what it really takes. 'cause I don't know about you, about you Z, but I think what we've, probably both seen the pattern of over those two years that we've been doing that.

Is, it is easy to oversimplify how to be successful as a portfolio career. It's harder, it's more complex than that. Um, what are you seeing in the trenches z of, of what it takes to be successful?

[00:27:05] Zed Vakil: Yeah, absolutely. And, and going back to my comments earlier on about, uh, and you said it, uh, you know, you, you, one day you're something and the next day you are not. I.

[00:27:15] Mike Richardson: Right. Mike Richardson. Who.

[00:27:19] Zed Vakil: Who's no, you've got a lot of that. Hey, I, I came out of a shiny brand new company, BMW, into a beaten up old Volvo, um, when I left. So I know where, where that is. And by the way, that is the subject also about, you know, being financially, uh, uh, aware too. But that's for another day. What I see in the trenches up, um, up close is.

Two, two types of people generally. One, those who have the humility and understanding that things have changed massively and that they'll have to take, in fact, I was talking to a lady earlier on who displayed these, um, uh, these characteristics. They'll have to take things one at a time and really understand how to put together something that will work.

The other side of it and the other type of character is that character who believes. That because they were SVP at Google that Mon on Friday, on Monday morning, they'll still carry on with that same status. And it will enable them to open doors, get new business, et cetera. And they're scratching their heads in 12 months time because they really haven't prepared themselves for this new portfolio world.

Now some people crack it by luck, but mostly we have to put in interventions and, and as you and I might work at extensively different interventions at different stages from A to Z to get people to where they need to be. On this, their own success route, what success looks like for them, but actually the commonality of making sure that you are aligned with your own passionate purpose, that you really understand your marketplace, that you have a value proposition that matters.

You are not a solution looking for a problem, but a problem. Uh, and the other way around. So. I think the, the naivety, I think is something that, and, and I hope that's not being too, um, uh, coarse. The naivety I I see in people who would otherwise have been very experienced and very reasoned in their corporate life or their previous life, somehow forget to do that in their portfolio life.

And I think that's a big

[00:29:36] Mike Richardson: Yeah, I love that. Actually, that reminds me of what I've said many, many, many times is look. I've been accused of being naive at every phase of my career. I remember it in my twenties, my thirties, my forties, my fifties, my sixties, um, where I am now. so I've been accused of being naive at every phase of my career.

Including this one. Including this one. Right. I,

love that.

[00:30:00] Zed Vakil: I.

[00:30:01] Mike Richardson: Yeah. Yeah. No, no. I love that everybody, because what that means is I've stuck my head up into a new arena. That I've not been in before and I got a a lot to learn. I gotta be a quick study to figure this stuff out and start to, you know, take the right steps, get some traction, get on a trajectory that can lead to a great place rather than if I'm not careful, I can spin my wheels for a long time and, and be a busy fool.

Um, and by the way, uh uh,

[00:30:36] Zed Vakil: And say that's what I was doing, uh, before I realized I had to stop and get a grip and stop these wheels spinning. So absolutely right.

[00:30:45] Mike Richardson: Yeah, and so, so that's what this, this podcast stream will be about everybody, portfolio conversations about. How, how to get traction, how to unfold a trajectory, how to, um, sort of, um, be in the flow o of all of that. And, uh, you touched upon something else, Zed, you said the A to Z. Uh, that reminds me everybody that, that Zed and I are working on a book, uh, that we'll be publishing this year.

At least an ebook. Uh, we're calling it the A to Z or in English, A to Z, not least of all. Picking up on Z's, uh, uh, nickname, uh, A to Z, uh, an A to Z Road, Atlas of Portfolio Career Success. Now let's talk a little bit Zed about why we feel. We want and need to write that book. Really, we feel like, again, there's a void that needs to be filled, right?

And I, and we can't find the book we want to read, and so we've decided to write it together, delve into that a little bit more, Zed.

[00:31:56] Zed Vakil: Sure. I think the best analogy I can think of is, you know, if, if you are studying a subject. Whether it's business, um, geology, biology, chemistry, there are thousands of textbooks and thousands of reference sites you can get to, um, to do that, uh, that vocation, that career, that, that, um, challenge. I think what Mike and I have identified is that we are resource alike in a space which shouldn't be.

Because this is just going to burgeon this sector of portfolio careers is going to become and is becoming huge. And therefore, if nothing else, those people who are pioneering this space. And we put ourselves in that, in that, um, frame because we've been doing it for a lot of years, even though it hasn't been core portfolio.

I'm not sure I could spell portfolio at the beginning. Mike. Um, the upshot of it was. Is that we want to create something that can become a reference book, a reference resource that you can turn to, not have to read it verbatim, but, but to read, be able to go to places that give you that immediate actionable insight into a topic that needs to be put right in your own portfolio life.

[00:33:19] Mike Richardson: And, and there are some resources out there. Everybody there really are. Um, if you go looking, obviously the portfolio collective is a great place to, to go, to go looking and just Google that and you'll find that easily everybody. And, and there's a, there's a freemium level membership, so you can get plugged in there, but as, as Zed and I said earlier.

We quickly deduced that, yes, that's gonna be a great introduction, but most portfolio professionals need something deeper, more ongoing, more continuous than that. And then, uh, there's some various books around, and I, I think I shared with you, Z I'm, I'm listening to one right now on, on Audible and it's called And, and please listeners, if you fancy listen to it, go get it.

It's a great little book. Uh, the Portfolio Life. The portfolio life had a future proof your career, avoid burnout and build a life bigger than your business card by Christina Wallace, uh, who's actually on faculty, at least as an adjunct, I believe. Excuse me, Christina, if I am mangling your resume here. Um, uh, uh, on faculty at Harvard, um, Harvard Business School, I think.

I think she's a Harvard MBA herself, uh, the portfolio life. And it's a great book. I'm about halfway through it. No doubt. As we get into the second half of that book, it gets deeper into some practical, pragmatic things you can do and tools and frameworks and thinking. But the reality is everybody, and we've seen this in the forum that we have run for two years.

Most of those members have read most of the books. They've been through most of the basic training of how to, you know, figure out their positioning and their, their, their, their, um, offerings and their solutions and their passions and their purpose and all of that. They've done the basics, which most books tend to cover at sort of 30,000 feet, and to some degree they're not.

As successful, certainly as they want to be. And they're wondering why. And of course, what what we do is we double click, we get down into the weeds and we start to, to, to show them the blind spots of, well, you know, this isn't really clear, that isn't really working. This isn't jiving with everything else.

No wonder you are sort of spinning your wheels here. And so that's where our energy's coming from to write this A to Z road. Atlas, uh, of portfolio career success is to really give people a play by play, turn by turn, um, you know, roadmap, um, to help them get from where they are to where they want to be with their portfolio, uh, career and their.

Success of as a portfolio professional. Um, what kinds of things, what kinds of things do you think we'll be delving into Z in all of that?

[00:36:18] Zed Vakil: Oh God. We need another podcast for that. Um, I'll come back to that. I, I, I won't, I won't fudge it. Um, but I, I should say that, um, one of the, I think really interesting things, Mike and I have identified. And it, it's not new, but maybe it's new in the virtual world, in the digital world, in the portfolio world.

I think the element of a collegiate exploration of issues with a group that you are bonded with, not just leveraged the collective intelligence of the group by, by bringing some humanity. Into what can be an extraordinarily lonely existence. And whilst it might be virtual the way we, uh, are addressing the problem for portfolio professionals, that is only because, um, we want to be where they need us to be.

So we can't be in every country in the world. So we, we probably provide it digitally. And I think that, um, bringing together of humans, albeit over a screen sharing and exploring. Um, a like issue, a like challenge, a like problem, uh, is a very, very powerful thing. And Mike, we've seen a lot of that in recent, uh, in recent months and years in terms of, um, what I think will bring the best benefit to portfolio professionals outside of the, the, the, the granular, this is my issue and this is what I need to do.

I would turn to, and, and, you know, I think you know what I'm gonna say, Mike. The fact that I had dismissed for so long what I consider to be WOOWOO subjects, uh, like your passionate purpose, for instance, and, and, and really understanding your why. I'm actually so passionate about it. I'm currently working on an AI model that will take some of the drudgery outta that and get people to the center of their why as quickly as possible, because.

The alignment of that to your business hypothesis is going to become crucial because it's too hard to to be doing the stuff that we do if it doesn't align with your current or intended life. And I think there's a great underestimation of how you should align your why, align your sense of purpose with what you are doing, and not see it as something that's optional, but by, but seeing it as something that is essential.

[00:38:50] Mike Richardson: Yeah, beautiful. Love that. And so, yeah, everybody, so Z and I have energy to. Make a contribution to the ecosystem of support that needs to emerge around this whole trend, this whole rising tide of portfolio careers. And again, earlier we said, we'll just use that label and there's a whole bunch of different things you can put in that bucket because everybody.

Will have a portfolio career at some point, or at least that's the only safe assumption. Um, and frankly, it is a very underserved, uh. Uh, domain, there's a void that needs to be filled. And so we're gonna contribute to the ecosystem at various levels, and, and people get to sort of choose what level they wanna participate at and maybe progress from one to the other.

Um, ultimately. We, as you just heard, we're gonna, we're gonna get our book written this year, as Zed just mentioned. A spin out of that, uh, can be an AI enabled platform that can, people can use for self-coaching and self-assessment and, and, and mapping out, you know, their action plan and their pathway. Uh, we mentioned the portfolio peer forum, those people that want to get involved in that.

But this podcast is, is here to sort of cast a wider net for those people that just wanna be on the fringe listening in and, uh, just getting tuned in and spooled up around all of this. That's what this podcast is here to do, and we look forward to having you all along for the ride, everybody. So we're gonna be doing this, uh, um, you know.

By and large, every month, every six weeks, there'll be a portfolio conversations episode of the Peering podcast, and we'll, we'll gradually accumulate that. We'll have some guests, uh, we'll have some thought leaders, we'll have some authors. We'll have some speakers. We'll have anybody we can find that we feel can really, um, shine a light onto this domain. I'm really excited. Zed. I'm really excited about working on this book together. Uh, we've got started. Everybody, uh, we're gonna use, we're gonna use an AI enabled book writing platform, uh, and we're getting started right now and it's gonna happen this year, so we're really excited about it. What are your thoughts about the book, Zed?

[00:41:11] Zed Vakil: Yeah, I'm, I'm loving that. I'm, I'm a bit of trepidation, but not too much. I, I thought over the trepidation. I'm very interested in how AI is now.

It's such an enabling tool and I would would advise anybody who hasn't, um, got into AI to really stop just using it as an advanced version of Google and look at how it might help you in, in the work and the preparations that you need to do. Mike, I just wanna finish off by saying one further thing about this, this difference between your portfolio career and your, your previous career, if you like.

Maybe it's, it's worth actually attaching the word life. Portfolio rather than career because it's a life. Right. Um, and, and whilst we all may have had a career prior, I think a portfolio career is very much part of your portfolio life. And I'd like to think that some, some, uh, episode down the road, Mike, we might even branch out a little bit and talk about what does that mean in terms of family.

Health, money, et because they all very, very relevant things in.

[00:42:26] Mike Richardson: Yeah, no, it's very well said. Um, you know, as I said, everybody, I've been in the field of, uh, peer forums, peer groups, peer advisory boards for more than two decades now, and. And Zed has now joined me in that field, as we talked about over the last few years, and therefore have always been working with members and coaching members, you know, of, uh, startups and small to medium sized mid-market companies and corporations.

And, you know, some of those are, most of those are owner managed. Some of them are venture capital or private equity banked. Some of them are family businesses. Um, but in some way, shape, or form, they're all that sort of classic, you know, big small company as I like to call it. They're too small to be big and too big to be small.

They're kind of in the messy middle and, um, a CEO and or a C-suite executive of a business like that. Business and life becomes inseparable. It's a tangled web of all of it.

professional development and personal growth becomes inseparable. Um, it's a tangled web of business, professional, personal life.

It's everything. Um, and in particular, if and when somebody goes portfolio times 10. Because now, um, business professional, personal life are inseparable. They are just one tangled web of everything. Um, there are some fabulous life possibilities that emerge as a portfolio professional. Um, not least of all things as, as mundane as tax efficiency and things like that, uh, but schedule efficiency and the opportunity to combine business and, and, and life travel, uh, to be nomadic, if that's what you choose to do.

Uh, but it, it gives you all kinds of possibilities that didn't exist before or certainly were more challenging. And I suspect that that is why that book that I just referenced from Christina Wallace, she chose to call the portfolio life, uh, not just.

[00:44:40] Zed Vakil: Yes.

[00:44:42] Mike Richardson: Portfolio career. So very, very, very great point, Zed. So we're excited everybody.

We're excited to be, um, launching this new stream of the podcast portfolio Conversations. We're excited to be writing a book and delving into ai. We're excited to continue our journey with our portfolio peer forum. We're excited about the trends that we see with the portfolio collective that just continues to grow, uh, rapidly.

Uh, it's gonna be exciting year. Zed, did you have other things that you wanted to share, Zed, before we begin to land the plane here?

[00:45:13] Zed Vakil: I think we, we land the plane. Uh, Mike, I think the, um. The, the, the, the, the scene is set or the stage is set. Now for us to, um, drill down into some of the things that you and I both know are really, really important, I would finish off by a soundbite and say, look. We don't want you to get too disturbed by anything that we've said.

It is all achievable. Your version of success is achievable. But one word of caution and one thing that I see a lot of, don't redesign your corporate life into your portfolio life, which is so easy to do because that memory muscle kicks in and you behave the same as you did before. You're gonna have to change.

[00:45:57] Mike Richardson: And I'll, I'll, yeah. Number one, I'll double down on that. And number two, everybody, um, when you get it right, not that Zed and I are are perfect by any means. We're not, and by the way, no portfolio career will be a straight line journey We've had. We've had plenty of our ups and downs. It's a, it's a bit of a rollercoaster ride, but when you get more right than you get wrong and you, you, you keep the snowball effect rolling, right?

So that you are compounding the snowball effect faster than the snowball is melting, then you can, you can arrive in a, in a great place where frankly, uh, and I'll let you speak for yourself. My portfolio career has been the most fulfilling, um, part of my career and my life. To date, and I only expect that to continue, uh to get better and better and better.

I don't know about you, Zed. I'll never retire. I mean, you know, hopefully with a bit of luck staying healthy. Of course. Um. You know, why would I ever want to retire from my passionate purpose that doesn't end well if, if I'm not careful. Now, I might ease off, I might scale back. I might, I might dial back a little bit, but why would I ever want to retire from being in the lives of the, the people that I work with and have them in mind?

So, um, what about you, Zed? Any, any, uh, IM, any imminent retirement plans? Z.

[00:47:22] Zed Vakil: And like you look, um, re retirement's nice, but I think it's different for everybody. And I, and I, I have no intention of retiring. I've got too much energy, I've got too much in my tank in terms of my passion or purpose that I want to, um, do. I think the whole element of, um, thinking about yourself in the context of your portfolio life, giving yourself the freedoms that you would've never have had, had you stayed, um, put uh, in your, in your corporate career, I think is, is, is, is a blessing.

Uh, the fact that you have have now got control. Albeit with some of the tips and tricks that we're gonna be talking about, you've got control over, uh, uh, your income, your businesses, your activities, your life, I think will, and if I can close on a comment that someone made when I was researching, uh, portfolio peer forums, before we started, I asked this gentleman who's a very well known, um, person in the uk who, so I shall not name him.

He was a member of another, uh, peer-to-peer forum organization. I said, do you think that made you the business person that you are now? 'cause he is hugely successful. And he turned around to me and he went, no. And I thought, oh, that's odd. It's counter counterintuitive because I was certain he was gonna say, of course it did.

You know, I was there 12 years and he turned around to me after a sort of a breath of air and went, you know what though? Wait a minute. It said, he goes, I don't think it made me better at business, but I think what it did is it made me a better person and that made me better at business. And I thought that was a great anecdote.

Um, and one I'd.

[00:49:10] Mike Richardson: Awesome, everybody. So there we have it. Uh, another episode of the Peering Podcast and the first and launch episode of Portfolio Conversations as a stream inside of the Peering podcast. Uh, come on back everybody and join us again. We're gonna delve into the success factors for a portfolio career as a portfolio professional.

Zed and I are gonna be co-hosting that stream of episodes. We're gonna have a lot of fun as we go along. Thanks for being here, Zed. We'll see you next time

[00:49:38] Zed Vakil: Thanks, Mike. Thanks everyone. Bye-bye.