Marcia Beckner
Welcome back to the final episode of our eight-part Board CEO Partnership series, where we’ve been exploring how boards and CEOs can work together to build healthy cultures for greater impact.
I’m your host, Marcia Beckner, and if you’re just joining us, I encourage you to begin at culturecares.com/41, and you can find the full transcript for today’s episode at culturecares.com/48.
Today’s guest brings a perspective that very few people have. He’s built multiple successful companies, sat through hundreds of board meetings. I’ll get the exact number from him in a minute, and experience the boardroom from nearly every angle.
Robert Wolfe is a three-time entrepreneur and the co-founder of Zeck, a company transforming how boards and leadership teams prepare for more strategic board meetings.
Before Zeck, Robert co-founded Moosejaw, which was acquired by Walmart, and CrowdRise, the fundraising platform acquired by GoFundMe.
After years of building companies and serving boards, Robert realized the frustrations he experienced in the boardroom weren’t unique to him.
Leaders everywhere were spending countless hours preparing for meetings that left little time for meaningful strategic engagement; that insight led him to co-create Zeck with his brother Jeffrey Wolfe and actor Edward Norton.
I invited Robert here to join this series not because he built an incredible board platform, which he has, but because his experience gives him a unique perspective on what helps CEO and board partnerships thrive and what might unintentionally get in the way.
Today, we’re talking about board culture, entrepreneurship, leadership, and the practical habits that help boards and CEOs become true strategic partners.
Robert, welcome to the show.
Robert Wolfe
That was a mic drop intro. I feel like we should end it right here.
Marcia Beckner
Well, thank you so much for being here.
Now, I just shared that you built three successful companies so far, and looking back, what is the biggest lesson you’ve learned about building organizations that people want to be a part of?
Robert Wolfe
In terms of the board specifically, or just generally?
Marcia Beckner
anything that comes to mind. Board, we talk about it all. Board and staff and employees.
Robert Wolfe
Well, for the staff and employees, where we’ve sort of always hung our hat, for lack of a better way of saying it, is by making everything fun.
So I mentioned prior to us getting on this call that we have a few rules at our company. The first rule at all three of our companies is let’s have as much fun as we can.
We’re all working so hard, so we want our staff and our customers to actually like it, and we work really hard to make that happen.
And it relates to the board because for us, the board meeting is whether it’s a nonprofit or a company, your four or eight most consequential meetings of the year, and everyone dreads them.
And part of our mindset at Zeck, and it’s actually similar to the work we did at our prior company, CrowdRise, is that if we can actually build a system so that the leadership team and the board looks forward to their board meetings. They will be more productive.
So, if you go to our website, and we’re talking about board meetings, right? You don’t think board meetings are fun, but we have a wedding crashers quote on our homepage and an almost famous movie quote.
Like we’re the idea again is let’s figure out a way to make these meetings valuable so that everyone looks forward to them instead of approaching them with such misery and dread.
Making Board Meetings More Engaging
Marcia Beckner
I think you just turn the industry on its head because it could be like the driest thing ever to go to a board meeting and just talk about governance and policies, and you just decide to flip the script.
Robert Wolfe
Well, at our prior company, CrowdRise, which was a fundraising platform, when we were researching the space, we came to the conclusion that giving to charity was burdensome and guilt-ridden, and it was actually seen as tactless to tell people how you gave to cause.
Right? Nobody did that.
Our idea was if we can make it fun, so that people were actually self-interested when it came to their philanthropy, and dare I say make it social, then perhaps we could have this impact that we had that we had talked about.
And back in 2009, 2010, nobody posted. On social, saying I just gave X to UNICEF or to American Cancer Society, our idea was how do we flip that?
So much of what we’re doing in the board space, even though it’s a completely different world, is running that same or similar playbook.
Marcia Beckner
And how did you have this idea or this epiphany that this needed to change in the world, and what made it such an interesting problem for you to solve.
Robert Wolfe
So, at our prior two companies, Moosejaw and CrowdRise, our board meetings were miserable.
I used to joke that the board meeting would ruin one month of every quarter for me.
Our leadership team, we would spend literally 100 100, 150 hours putting a presentation together that we would send across in a PowerPoint or Google Slides or a PDF that no one could read on their phone, no one could engage with it in any way, and we’d get into the meeting and quite literally reread our board a deck that they had already read.
So we knew we were bad at it.
What we didn’t realize is this angst we were having was universal, and I was actually on a trip with my brother and Edward Norton and some some other friends, and I had to leave the group for a board meeting, and it was on Zoom.
It was a nonprofit board meeting, and I came back after three hours, and I said to myself I don’t know if people out there have seen Fight Club, but I said to Edward I said, “Do you remember that scene in Fight Club when you were punching yourself in the face?
That’s how I think everyone on both sides of the table felt during that board meeting, and we all started talking about it, lamenting about the board meeting.
And one of the people there was the co-founder of Vista Private Equity, who lives in board meetings.
And then we started researching the space and said, “Okay, maybe we can build software to help solve this problem.
Marcia Beckner
And when did that start?
Robert Wolfe
We launched in the middle to end of 2022.
What we didn’t realize at that time is we went to friends and said, “Hey, we’ve built this MVP, right? Can you test it and give us some feedback?
And their answer was, “No, I can’t put a half-baked product in front of our board, right? These are the most important meetings of the year.
So that was a learning for us, and so we had to go a little further and go deeper into the product to make sure it was actually ready for real boards, so it took us a little longer to go live than we anticipated.
So we’ve been around for a few years. It certainly still feels like a startup, sometimes in a good way, sometimes in a very challenging way.
But we are working really hard, and we have just our customers.
I really feel like are on this journey with us, which is sort of bizarre, but we’re a software company, and the amount of feedback we get is so effusive-it’s weird.
Like I could look up, I could-we have a Slack channel called Decent Customer Feedback, and I could pull it up. It’s literally hard to believe.
I mean, we use a lot of software, Zeck, and I like a lot of it, but I’m not emailing the CEO of HubSpot saying this has been the best experience of my life.
You’ve changed the way we work, so that part’s been pretty fun.
Marcia Beckner
That’s really fulfilling.
Robert Wolfe
Yeah,
Marcia Beckner
and and in your work with all of your customers and all these boards now that you have this bird’s eye view of what’s going on in this world, what’s the biggest misconception you see with either boards to the leadership teams who are preparing these decks and these for these meetings, or the other way around that the CEO or executive director has for the boards.
Rethinking the Traditional Boardroom
Robert Wolfe
At the highest level, I think people are stuck in this notion that these meetings are supposed to be terrible, and that you’re-it’s supposed to be grueling and miserable and not drive value.
I really do think that’s the case.
I mean, it’s-if you think about PowerPoint, most companies are building their presentation in PowerPoint.
PowerPoint was built in 1987, right?
You could build a PowerPoint tomorrow, and it would not look very different than a PowerPoint you built 15 years ago.
There’s a problem with that.
There is no chance that companies, if they look at their tech stack, are using products that old, aside from during the board meeting.
So we’re just stuck, and I think that’s the biggest problem: is that people like this.
This is because people can’t see me, so I won’t bother bringing out a prop.
But an attorney sent me a packet two inches thick with legal documents to sign, and I said no, send me a document.
This is crazy.
I’m not going to go through every tab and sign it with ink and paper and put it in a FedEx and send it back to you.
That’s just not the way people work anymore.
However, we are working that way when it comes to the board meeting.
So I do feel like there’s an opportunity to flip that mindset, and that that’s what we’re trying to do.
But it’s hard, right? I understand that transition is hard.
So we’re trying to recognize that as we talk to customers, and and again.
And be on their team when it comes to flipping from their slide deck to something that is much more appropriate,
Marcia Beckner
and it’s very interactive.
Yes, and you can see it’s like maybe just give a high level, like what people would get if if they’re looking at Zeck and using Zeck instead of the traditional PowerPoint, yeah,
Robert Wolfe
I think when we launched, we thought our primary value would be saving leadership teams time because as an operator, that was so tough for us.
The time we put into the board presentation, and you have to be pro, right?
Your board is the lifeblood for your company, and that value add is real, but where we get all this positive feedback is around engagement.
So when you’re when you as a board member are looking at your Zeck, there are several paths you can take to engage with other board members or engage with the leadership team, and I won’t bore you with all of them.
But it really does become this collaborative experience where everyone is working together, and you’re also getting ahead of sort of the drudgery or homework that’s associated with the board meeting.
And I can give you some data from my own experience, so that once you get into the live meeting, it’s actually forward thinking and strategic as opposed to reviewing a report card, which can be done asynchronously, right?
We don’t need to all be in a room together to reread a deck.
That’s insane.
Yet that’s what most people are doing today. It’s crazy.
Marcia Beckner
Yeah, it’s just such a waste of resources when you get this group of people in a room.
You should be really brainstorming on the future and the strategy.
Robert Wolfe
right
Marcia Beckner
…so that’s what Zeck enables you to do.
I know Zeck serves really large organizations, like 10 million and above in revenue, and a lot of our listeners may be at that level, but many are at between one and 10 million.
What have you learned in the larger organizations that like a smaller or medium-sized organization can take forward whether they use Zeck or not.
Like what nuggets can you give them that they can take action on before their next board meeting to make their next board meeting more fun, like you said, and engaging.
Robert Wolfe
Yeah. Well, first, about 40% of our customers are nonprofits, right?
Which has been awesome.
We don’t target nonprofits at all, so those all come through through referrals, which has been amazing for us.
And if you have a board, you can use Zeck, right?
So there is a very wide spectrum of nonprofits and companies that use Zeck.
I do think there is this antagonism between the leadership team and the board, right?
As a part of the leadership team, you feel like you are reporting to a group, and as the board, you feel like you’re checking their homework, right?
It doesn’t have to be that way.
Yes, there is a part of the board process that creates accountability, and that’s important.
But whether you are a nonprofit that is just getting going, or a public company, it is that collaboration that drives value for the live meeting, and that’s so much of what we do at Zeck is enable that, and also hold people accountable.
So I’ll tell you this is a real story that happened last week.
With Zeck you get very deep analytics, and a company that uses Zeck had their first board meeting, and they got into the room and they told their board members they said, listen, person X, Y, and Z read the presentation.
They each spent 43 minutes on it, but person A, B, and C, you didn’t even open it.
One of the board members who didn’t open the presentation was so blown away by that accountability that he’s on the board of a nonprofit, and he reached out to us because he wants his nonprofit to use it, right?
So that was illuminating.
So I think board members are actually signing documents saying they would participate.
Right?
This is not a joke.
So you have to dig in, right?
And we make it so it’s not that hard.
So, for example, 92% of our traffic is mobile.
Go try and read a slide deck on your phone, there’s a reason none of us woke up this morning and read our news in a slide deck.
You can’t do it, right?
Zeck is built for mobile, so if you think about all the little ways we can make it easier for everyone to participate, the fact that you can’t read a PDF on your phone and we still are presenting that way, yet you’re not reading anything else in the world in that same format is telling, right?
So there are a lot of little pieces of the product that make it easier to drive value.
Marcia Beckner
Yeah, and beyond the product, it’s like you’re removing the friction from what should be.
A very symbiotic aligned partnership, and that’s what we’ve been talking about in this series: is how to turn your board into a team.
And we do that through we talk we talk about it through the CARES model, and the CARES model stands for commitment, which is that culture of accountability.
Zeck is a huge system and tool that can help with that.
We talked about appreciation, which is a culture of connection, respect, engagement, safety, and trust, and all of those things that need to be part of building a team and and having a board get to know each other.
Because I was I shared a story earlier in the series, where I joined a board, and it was all virtual.
None of us lived in the same city.
There was no time spent in Zoom getting to know each other.
It was basically a slate, a Brady Bunch square of strangers every month, or however often it was.
And I just felt like if I saw a board member that I serve on a board with on the street, I wouldn’t even recognize them because I wouldn’t, you know, just a little swear I would see.
So, like, without like getting to know each other when you’re in the same room or whether it’s a Zoom room or a physical room, like this is where like Zeck can kind of take that pressure away of like all of the kind of the hardship part of it, and that leaves space for collaboration and conversations that can can help you reach greater levels of impact.
Building a True Board-CEO Partnership
Robert Wolfe
Yeah, there’s. I totally agree.
Think about the idea of your next board meeting.
It’s going to be in a Zoom with a bunch of people you don’t know, and you’re going to get a 150 page PDF a day before the meeting that you’re expected to read and add value when you haven’t engaged with that group in three months.
There is nothing fun about that, right?
That is not a meeting you’re going to look forward to.
So, being able to flip that to make these meetings valuable, like we send, we send Zeck cookies to every company when they have their first Zeck board meeting, and they’re homemade.
And one of the cookies says, “This cookie is to whip at your most unproductive board member.
Right, and we get so much feedback about that.
It’s great, right?
But to us, that’s an idea of okay, how do we stack up all these little things to make these meetings more valuable?
Marcia Beckner
Yeah, and for all the organizations listening that may be a smaller slash medium, and I still recommend that you look into Zeck and just like get some ideas from their website about how fun they are, and just to inject fun into your meetings is something that you can do at no cost.
I mean, of course, if you can get a system to help with all the things we’ve talked about today, that would be great.
But Robert, okay, I know we got to go pretty soon, but I know part of your culture value is to move fast and have fun.
Robert Wolfe
Yes, I
Marcia Beckner
read that somewhere.
Yes, right.
So that’s part of your company culture: move fast and have fun.
So I thought we like speeded.
You like speed. Let’s do a lightning round.
I’m really curious as to your thoughts to a few of these lightning round questions.
So first instinct.
Okay, ready?
Robert Wolfe
Yep.
Marcia Beckner
One word that describes a great board.
Robert Wolfe
Valuable.
Marcia Beckner
Biggest mistake CEOs make with their boards.
Robert Wolfe
Rereading them a deck in the live meeting.
Marcia Beckner
Biggest mistake boards make with CEOs:
Robert Wolfe
making it a homework session as opposed to a strategic session. One
Marcia Beckner
leadership habit every CEO or executive director should practice:
Robert Wolfe
Engagement.
Most of these problems are solved by being a great communicator.
So we try to communicate relentlessly, and we have some big shots on our board from Salesforce and Vista.
And if there’s an important part of the board presentation that through our analytics we see they haven’t read.
Well, we call them out, and you only have to do that one or two times because it creates this positive peer pressure, right?
So communication solves all problems.
Marcia Beckner
Love it.
One culture practice every organization should steal.
Robert Wolfe
I mean, I’d say speed.
We speed kills.
It’s really hard to be the smartest.
It’s actually not that hard to be the fastest.
So we have a lot of systems in place, and we have it at all of our companies to blow people away with speed.
Marcia Beckner
Yeah, I’ve definitely experienced that with you.
You’re so speedy with your communication.
We go
Robert Wolfe
fast.
Marcia Beckner
And then the last one, fill in the blank.
The healthiest organizations succeed because
Robert Wolfe
They’re great communicators.
I know that’s repetitive, but that’s that’s you’re over
Marcia Beckner
communicating that.
Yeah, there
Robert Wolfe
you go.
That’s right.
Perfect.
Practical Takeaways for Healthier Board Meetings
Marcia Beckner
Thank you.
Well, if people want to learn about SEC, where do they go?
Should they get a demo?
What? Yeah, ZECK dot.
Robert Wolfe
I do.
I would. Suggest humbly that you will never work with an organization, particularly a software company, that is more driven or engaged or has better customer service onboarding.
It’s all unlimited.
We think buying software is a pain in the ass, so we try to make it really easy.
And we obviously love our product, but I think what we do best is actually on the service side.
Marcia Beckner
Yeah, on the human side, I can see that for sure.
Well, thank you so much, Robert, for being here.
Go to the show notes if you want to learn more about Zec.
It’s z e c k dot app a p p.
So go check it out.
I think you’ll have fun just looking around their website and sign up for a demo if you’re just curious about what they could offer.
And thanks again, Robert.
It was great having you on here. It was
Robert Wolfe
great.
Marcia Beckner
Thanks for listening to today’s episode of Nonprofit CEO SPARK.
If you’re ready to turn burnout into boundaries and build a healthy, happy culture where everyone, including you, can thrive.
Visit culturecares.com to learn how I support nonprofit organizations like yours.
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And remember, you are meant for great things, and you don’t have to burn out to prove it.
Until next time, keep leading with courage and confidence.