Last week, Dax Dasilva, CEO of Lightspeed Commerce mentioned on Linkedin:
“Entrepreneurs need to constantly reinvent themselves. I think the best way to do that is to throw out your job description and rewrite it from scratch — and this should be done at every stage of a company’s growth. […] At some point, any entrepreneur is going to be wearing lots of hats,”

To which I replied: “Yep. I just tell people I am CXO with X being whatever and wherever I can assist/help you.” And no, I don’t mean a “chief experience officer,” but someone who wears many hats across the organization. Now granted, WatchMojo is a very unique organization & (false modesty aside) it’s rare for CEOs to be well-versed across so many functions, but in the years to come, expect to read more about the role of the CXO.

Indeed, inasmuch as craigslist founder Craig Newmark was ultimately head of customer service at the online classified disruptor and behemoth, as CEO, I am the de facto CXO of WatchMojo, serving as its CFO, CRO, CMO, Editor in Chief etc. Not by choice, over twenty years we have brought in many experienced people, hoping for great things to come, but realizing that while YouTube may have replaced TV, it’s not traditional media and old media folks look like fish out of water when navigating social video platforms. In the end, I always stayed loyal not just to the core founding team but also the mid-level managers & “front line” team whose tenure runs 5, 10, 15 and even 20 years! I rather give an opportunity to the unproven and go with youth and the team that built the brand than more experienced mercenaries who parachuted in the heady late 2010s, before the pandemic forced all to streamline operations & eliminate needless complexity.

We all love sports analogies in business, but whereas Tom Brady had to be an assassin on every single play, in business to win, you have to embrace playing quarterback and water boy, winning means the combination of people and their respective talents & skills to achieve a goal. While the exploits we achieved over two decades are indeed impressive, these days my job toggles from high profile partnerships & projects to more mundane and routine tasks.

My job is neither sexy nor glamorous. Effectively, I run the “centre help desk” across all departments for when matters are escalated. So yeah, I suppose I am CEO & CXO – and I love it.

As I used to wrap up my calls as a customer service rep from 1998-2001 for RBC Visa: Is there anything else I can help you with?