Building Boardsi: How Martin Rowinski & Boardsi Place Executives on a Journey to Board Opportunities | Staffing Series

Anthony Codispoti : Welcome to another edition of the Inspired Stories podcast where leaders share their experiences so we can learn from their successes and be inspired by how they’ve overcome adversity. My name is Anthony Codispoti and today’s guest is Martin Rowinski, the CEO of Boardsi. They transform board membership and executive development through its Boards suite, offering education, branding, profiling, and placement services. Their mission is to empower businesses by bringing exceptional leaders and organizations together, using AI to ensure precise executive board placement.

Now under Martin’s guidance, Boardsi has earned impressive accolades, including Inc. 5000 in 2023 and 2024, Inc. Power Partner 2022, and Real Leaders Impact Company of the Year for 2024. Martin is an accomplished leader in technology and executive consulting, holding past roles in strategic planning and operations. He has helped many organizations achieve growth by focusing on innovation, leadership, and strong partnerships. Through his years of experience, Martin has shown a commitment to placing senior leaders and roles where they can excel and make a lasting impact.

I’m excited to explore his journey and how he’s overcome challenges to reach success. Before we get into all that good stuff though, today’s episode is brought to you by my company, Add Back Benefits Agency, where we offer very specific and unique employee benefits that are both great for your team and fiscally optimized for your bottom line. One recent client was able to add over $900 per employee per year in extra cash flow by implementing one of our innovative programs. Results vary for each company and some organizations may not be eligible.

To find out if your company qualifies, contact us today at addbackbenefits.com. All right, back to our guest today, the CEO, Boardsi, Martin Rowinski . I appreciate you making the time to share your story today.

Martin Rowinski : Yeah, thanks for the great intro. I want to meet that guy. Just kidding.

Anthony Codispoti : When I run into him, I’ll let you know. Okay, so Martin, like so many other entrepreneurs, you’ve had several waypoints along your career before the idea for Boardsy came up. Pick one that’s maybe the most notable and what was the biggest thing you learned through that experience?

Martin Rowinski : Oh, man, which one to pick from so many. I’ve definitely had my share of startups and fails, but I would say there was after that mortgage meltdown. So I actually had a mortgage company that I owned. Things were going great, of course, and then 2008 hits. And you know, all the wholesale reps are like, Oh, it’s going to be great. We’ll get through it.

No problem. So you’re like, you know, holding on and I was holding on to it and held on to my employees and kept paying everybody and draining my account because there’s nothing incoming. And then realized it’s done and over with the mortgage business for brokers was done. So after that, which I just told you about one, one failure that I’ve had went through my financial struggles and really try to, you know, figure out what am I going to do next?

Oh, why am I like just literally I can’t even it was hard to think straight after that. Going through 2008 and being in that business. So I needed to really think outside the box. How to friends that you know, weren’t my partners at the mortgage business, but they were also in the mortgage business. So me and one connected and we were just throwing ideas up. And finally, I said, Hey, I think we can do something in search engine placement, help companies get on the first page of Google.

I think I got this figured out. And this is my tech background. I’m like, you know, I’ve read the algorithms. I think we can follow these patterns, put, you know, put these directories up and really help people. So we did. And we launched it and it grew from a literally from my dining room that we we took over. My wife was super happy about that to an office. And yeah, and then we were in the office growing and things were actually looking pretty good.

And learning lesson from this one was we had somebody that came on partnered with us signed up as a reseller of our service. They did pretty good with it. On paper, the whole team looked amazing, especially the CEO of that company. And we were just excited to be working with somebody that’s, you know, way done bigger, way bigger things than we’ve ever done. So you know, being two entrepreneurs, we’re all excited. They eventually pitched us on partnership and merging together and doing it as one, you know, going through a whole name change and everything. We did all of that. And after a few years, and the real the real CEO, we saw the real colors and what his ultimate mission was, was a tough lesson for us. We walked away from the business.

You can say we exited, but let’s just say it wasn’t anything I can retire off of. But a learning lesson was don’t trust what’s on paper, really get to know somebody. So yeah, that was a tough one.

Anthony Codispoti : Let’s let’s unpack a few of these things here, because you packed a lot of ups and downs into a very short few sentences there. And people listening are like, Oh, yeah, that must have been hard, you know, as mortgage business closed. But when you’ve been through something like that, it’s not just hard, it is gut wrenching, it is soul crushing, it is identity separating like existential threat kind of a thing that it’s hard to put into words.

Martin Rowinski : Yeah, it is. 2008 through 2009, we’re very, that was a very tough year. Very short amount of sleep, a lot of work.

Anthony Codispoti : And like you said, it’s hard, it’s hard to even think.

Martin Rowinski : Yeah, it really is. And then on top of that, you got lack of sleep, you know, I was the technology side of everything. So I was literally working with who wasn’t on the business, it was on the tech side. So it was just, it was tough. But you know, you got a family, you got to how you got to keep your roof over your, you know, over your head, and you got to provide food. And thankfully, my wife at this time was just actually, we weren’t married at this time, but my wife currently, she was just getting going as a hairstylist. So again, she’s an entrepreneur on top of all of this. And we actually utilized our Google search engine tools to get her going. And she was like, I would say she was probably one of our very first clients, obviously not paying for the service, almost like a guinea pig, like, let’s see what we can do.

And we lived in a small town in El Dorado Hills, right outside of Folsom. And we literally destroyed anything you googled with hair, she was on the front page. So her business just flipped and boomed right away. I mean, she was all super busy, built clientele super fast. She had people that would fly in for weddings from New York. And of course, they’re Googling boom, they got, you know, she’s got a New York client sitting in their chair. So it was, she was a great example of, you know, how powerful search engines at that time were.

Anthony Codispoti : And how did you know what to do? How were you guys so good at it so fast?

Martin Rowinski : Just studied the Google algorithm and provided exactly what Google wanted to see. And, you know, of course, they went through all their changes all the time, you know, they always had nicknames for their changes, or they named them just like hurricanes. But every time they would make a change, you know, something would maybe fall apart or a little bit and then just have to make adjustments and it would all come back. So just have to stay on top of their algorithm and make sure we provide and, you know, no black hat trickery was all exactly what Google wanted.

Anthony Codispoti : That is going to be my question. I didn’t want to go there, but you were doing some, you know, weird stuff behind the scenes.

Martin Rowinski : No, nothing just gave them exactly what they wanted. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And so, you know, you had your girlfriend, now wife, that, you know, was kind of a guinea pig client, you’re like, okay, yes, we understand this, we know what to do. We went out and started marketing and picking up more clients.

And then there was this partnership opportunity that they came about that seemed like this was going to be really good. And you thought you knew the guy, you find out later that you didn’t. Looking back, like, what would you have done differently in those early days? Like, what could have been a better way for you to sort of flesh out what his true colors were?

Martin Rowinski : I think two things. One, probably just not done the merger and just stay with a reseller partnership, let him keep doing what they’re doing, maybe wait a longer to see how successful they become as a reseller.

The second one would be probably a heavier financial evaluation and actually having a merger that provided some financial money towards me and my partner versus the way that we did merge. Yeah, a lot of promises. And, you know, their sweat equity was going to go into it and all that. And I just felt like it was all my sweat equity that kept going into it.

So, yeah. So, I mean, they helped out, especially in the beginning from finances, we were able to move into a better location, better office. So, there was definitely some help. I wouldn’t say it was personal financial help, like, you know, my account didn’t grow significantly personally. And I, you know, again, I just came out of a 2008 struggle. So, yeah, it, we were what I would say vulnerable.

Anthony Codispoti : And when did you realize that this was starting to go sideways? Like, what were the early clues?

Martin Rowinski : When we would bring certain ideas to the table that were shut down, when we actually were, I would say the biggest sign was we were looking at selling the business. And I can’t, I don’t want to name the company, but a large publicly traded company.

And he kept us out of the loop on purpose, just kept saying, I got it, I’ll handle it and, and really kept us out of the loop of know how I was brought in on a call one time just to explain our technology. Same question you just had, is it black hot? Is it white hot?

Is it what it is? And that was the only time I had interaction with them and just kind of kept us out of the whole loop. And he flew out to the corporate offices, came back, gave us the, you know, the summary of what happened. And, you know, it’s still a few months away. So that was a, that was a red flag. And of course, we weren’t just going to let it go. So we started digging in deeper of what was said, what happened. And then we found out some things and we heard some things that weren’t what he told us and kind of figured out the hidden agenda and just had to walk away.

Anthony Codispoti : The hidden agenda was what to squeeze you guys out. Yeah. Yeah. 100%. Okay, so I mean, it sounds like you had sort of a one two punch like, you know, I had the mortgage downturn totally out of your control. You start this business, it feels like it’s going well. And you got this, you know, partner doing shady things behind your back. How hard was it to pick yourself up the second time?

Martin Rowinski : Well, it wasn’t my second, I was pretty used to pivoting.

Anthony Codispoti : You had battle scars by this point. Yeah, I’ve been, I’ve been an entrepreneur since 16. So yeah, not my first rodeo.

Martin Rowinski : It wasn’t hard, but I was looking for something a little bit more stable. And we were able to actually find a company that really wanted to grow. We saw the issues that they had, we came on as consultants, and we were actually there for three years, or almost three years, and really helped the company grow and it paid off. I mean, we did pretty good financially. That included my partner, he came with me on this project.

Anthony Codispoti : We were consulting on SEO or what?

Martin Rowinski : No, no, no, totally different, totally different product, totally different service. But my technology site went into, at first it wasn’t all tech, but then I ended up basically helping them, helping the company streamline a lot of their processes. And my business partner, by the time I got into the tech side of that company, and really found holes that needed to be filled, my business partner basically helped them expand the office and grow it, or I should say second office.

So yeah, we were very successful, very, very lucky with that opportunity, provided income, great income, got us back on our feet, family-wise. And from there, we basically left, and this is when the Bords Eye idea came to forewishing, because again, this wasn’t my first time doing consulting either, I’ve done this before. And I wanted to, instead of being a consultant, watching the success of a company, and me being the one that’s helping them get there, I’ve helped companies go public, I’ve helped companies sell to a publicly traded company. This is in my younger years, but never saw the financial reward for that, because I was just a consultant. So yeah, great.

The reward is, thanks, you did a great job, but no finances came from that. So I was like, you know what, I need to get on a board, I need to be a board advisor, I want, you know, one to 3% stake in a company, and I’ll help them grow. That was my thinking. So of course, I’m online looking for board advisor roles, or board roles, and couldn’t find anything. So then I went to my business partner and said, you know what, I cannot be the only executive wanting to help other companies. There is a missing link out there, some kind of a port or something that can provide you. Some kind of a matchmaking service. Yeah, yeah. So then he laughed and he goes, yeah, like, you know, likematch.com for love, for lovers to meet up. But in the corporate world, I said exactly. So BordsEye was born.

Anthony Codispoti : And I feel bad in the introduction, I pronounced it Bordsy.

Martin Rowinski : Potato potato. It’s all the same at the end of the day.

Anthony Codispoti : I appreciate your understanding there. Okay, so the idea for BordsEye was born. And so then what were kind of the first steps to, I don’t know, you know, you sort of like, you felt that there was a need for this, did you go out and try to prove that there was a bigger market fit for it? Or did you just like jump right into building?

Martin Rowinski : Oh, yeah, we jumped right into it, built it, started reaching out to executives. And we definitely felt like there was a need for it right away. And the hardest part to figure out was how to find the companies, which we did. I just took a little bit longer to figure that out and a lot of testing and A-B testing. And finally, we got the formula figured out, we got the data figured out. And, you know, and this is all while we’re building the brands, of course, it’s not like we’re out there, LinkedIn or Facebook, like, oh, we’re a big, big name in the game. There was no name, there was no brand. So definitely at this point, seven years later, it’s a lot easier. A lot of people know who BordsEye is.

Anthony Codispoti : A lot of people know who you are. So basically the approach was you were running ads to find companies that, you know, had BordsEye’s that they wanted to fill with really smart people. And then you’re running separate ads to find people that would be, you know, that want to be on a board, that they have those really smart minds that would be a good fit for these companies.

Martin Rowinski : Yeah, yeah. And then matchmaking.

Anthony Codispoti : And then, and so what is the actual matchmaking part look like? You know, somebody’s got experience in, I don’t know, industrial, you got somebody over here who’s got a, you know, a retail brand, maybe they’re not a great fit for each other. And that’s, that one’s obvious, but there’s more nuances to how to pair people up.

Martin Rowinski : Yeah, no, there is a lot. And I won’t get into the whole science of it. But at the end of the day, if we were lacking that executive that exactly fit what the company told us they’re looking for, we would go out there and find them and have them join the network and then get them an interview.

Anthony Codispoti : Is it almost like executive recruiting at that point?

Martin Rowinski : Yeah, it is, but we’re more platform based. And, you know, back in those days, we were just a simple matchmaking service. And as you said, now we have a whole board suite. So we’ve grown as a company into providing education services, branding services, creating an executive impact reports that a company can quickly look at this individual executive and see exactly what kind of an impact they can make on their, for their company as a board member advisor. So we’ve come a long way since day one.

Anthony Codispoti : So you guys are generating a fee from the company?

Martin Rowinski : Exactly, and executives. Mainly the executives. Yeah. Mainly the executives, they’re, they’re paying a fee because it’s worth it for them. They’re going to make some money by being on this board, get some more exposure themselves, probably have other opportunities. Get education, get branding. Yes. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti : And so you guys also offer education through your site to the executives?

Martin Rowinski : Yes. Yeah, it’s, we have four courses right now. They’re all board leadership courses, what it takes to be a board member. You know, no matter what the executive level they’re at, not all of them have served on a board, not all of them, you know, as a CEO of a private company.

Sure. You know, I’m a board member, of course, if you’re a CEO, you’re a board member naturally of your board, but to be a third party advisor, to be a third party, it’s a whole different leadership. It’s not, you’re not in there as a CEO, you’re not the one making the changes. You’re there to, you know, provide governance, provide guidance. So it’s a different type of leadership. So yes, we have, we have courses that cover that. What, what’s expected of you as a board member?

Anthony Codispoti : Can you say a little bit more about what’s expected? Like, you know, am I going to like a quarterly meeting and sitting at a, in a conference room and saying that’s a good idea, that’s a bad idea? Or like, am I expected to do prep work outside of that?

Martin Rowinski : Like help, help me get a picture for me. Yeah. Usually you’re going to do prep work outside of that. A perfect board would be, you would receive a PDF that has or some kind of a document. There’s, there’s great these days, there’s a company called Zek, I’ll drop their name under your welcome, Zek, that really make it easy. I actually had the CEO Zek on my podcast. So, but they’re a great company to build out a deck for a board meeting. So usually you would get a deck prior to board meeting. So you can go through it, look at the financials, try to find the halls. So when you come to the board meeting, instead of saying yes, or, or you’re just sitting there voting, you can actually provide feedback or, hey, I really disagree with this or, you know, hey, your growth and, or our growth and employee really needs to be stronger on the customer service side.

Looks like we’re really losing on the customer service side, whatever the feedback is you’re bringing. And yes, typically quarterly meetings, if you’re a board advisor, you’re going to be in a lot more meetings. CEO will typically reach out to advisors a lot more often, not wait for that quarterly meeting. There might be an issue that pops up somewhere else. So it’s all, it’s all dependent, but your typical company will do quarterly meetings.

Anthony Codispoti : So what would be sort of the range of the time commitment? So a lot of a quarter, a hundred hours, a quarter.

Martin Rowinski : Yeah, a lot of people think that they can sit on like 10 boards and, and do great. I think there’s a, there’s a limit, because there is a time commitment. And you don’t want to be that board member that’s not an effective board member, you’re just sitting there to have a seat so you can put on your resume. You should be a board member that is effective and that actually dedicates time. And I like to even say more than that, make sure that you don’t just take a seat, just to take a seat.

Make sure you believe in that company’s mission, vision and values, because those should align with your personal mission, vision and values. When those things align, there’s a lot more passion. So a lot more great things can happen and be done.

Anthony Codispoti : How do companies think about compensating their board members?

Martin Rowinski : So there’s several factors, right? We work a lot with private companies. And a lot of times, there’ll be a combination of money and usually some percentage of the company, which is usually earned over time. So if they say, Hey, max ceiling is going to be 3%, we’re going to start you over with a quarter right now.

At the end of the year, we’ll get that to 1% at the end of second year, 2% at the end of third year, 3% and then we’ll reevaluate where we’re at at that point. I also tell a lot of companies or I don’t personally anymore, but we tell the companies, Hey, create an advisory board in the future. This would be your first go to, if you’re looking for independent board members, your first go to would be to your advisory board because you’ve already had experience of working with them for a year or two years and you know their personality, you know who you like, you know who you can work with, you know who’s brought value to that company. That is your fishing pond for bringing on board members.

Anthony Codispoti : So you guys have been doing this a little over seven years, starting 2017. How far into it were you Martin before you realized this is working? About a year. Okay, that’s pretty fast. Yeah, it was pretty quick.

Yeah. So pretty quickly you figured out how to run those ads and talk to people in a way that, you know, got them into the system and had them intrigued to use your services. And if somebody’s listening now, where they’re, let’s start first with the company and they’re like, huh, like that sounds interesting. Like what’s the profile of a company that would be a good fit for the board side platform?

Martin Rowinski : I would say most companies we work with are mid-range companies. So doing over a million dollars in revenue. A lot of them are a lot bigger than that. A lot of international companies. So it ranges quite wide, but we do also have startups that come to us that are really struggling. You know, maybe they got a product, they got it off the ground, but are struggling in distribution.

So they’re like, Hey, can you guys help us out? Find a advisor that, you know, maybe somebody that use high level executive that’s at Amazon. We really need help to figure this out, how to distribute our product.

So yeah, it ranges all over the place. Most companies are privately held companies. We did have the opportunity to work with a few public traded companies. We’ve also had, and this is probably the most exciting example, work with privately traded companies that were about to go public and they really needed to diversify their board.

And those, those were awesome. In all honesty, I don’t know if we’re working with anybody right now that’s in that stage. I’m sure somebody is, I don’t know if they’re actually like working on going public, but we knew specifically of a few companies because they were pretty open about it. And they said, we really need to work on diversity of our board. And yeah, seeing it go public six months later, seven months later. And the thank you emails from the executives who, you know, maybe took on a position not making a lot of money, maybe it was just, Hey, we’ll give you 3% or 5% or actually one of them got 10%. I don’t know how lucky she got, but and when they’re in public, their, their lives changed. Yeah, that’s pretty cool.

Anthony Codispoti : And so for somebody who’s on the executive side that’s listening, wondering if they might be a good fit for a role like this. What’s their profile?

Martin Rowinski : Yeah. So typically definitely C-suite, anybody in the C-suite, directors at this point, we’ve even had the opportunity of working with some VPs that might not be quite ready to serve on the board, but they’re looking for trajectory and hitting that next level, maybe changing their career and finding a C-suite position. Maybe they’ve been a VP for five years and they’re like, you know, I want to, I want to be a CEO or I want to be a CEO. Taking that courses online really preps them for that. Doing branding really gets them exposed. We have seen executives that have had career changes that were positive, whether they jumped companies or within their own company been promoted. And then eventually they’ll be ready for a board position. But of course, entrepreneurs, successful exit founders can bring great value to startups leading them down the path that they have already lived. So those types of people are definitely great board members, board advisors.

Anthony Codispoti : With your focus on sort of connecting matchmaking companies and high level executives, are there any surprising insights or trends that you’ve observed? And that’s a really open-ended question. I don’t know if there’s an answer to it, but I mean, you get to see kind of a lot of different things going on. Is there something interesting that you’ve noticed?

Martin Rowinski : I’ll tell you something interesting and funny. That’s a great combination. Notice that some executives, and it’s usually the ones that have an ego, I’m the greatest CEO in the world. When I said that I was quoting, I wasn’t saying I’m the greatest. Just be clear.

Anthony Codispoti : We’re going to pull out that snippet just right there. Martin Rowinski is saying he’s the greatest CEO in the world.

Martin Rowinski : Thanks. Yeah, I’ve seen that done to other people. Yeah. But the ones that have an ego that come to us and have unrealistic expectations and 30 days later after joining the network, not taking any education courses, not doing any branding, actually not doing anything at all, come to us and complain that they haven’t been placed yet. 30 days after joining the network. The reason I say it’s funny is because I always want to, if I was on the phone, I’d be like, how long did it take you to become a CEO?

Was it 30 days? Did you get out of college and you went to Microsoft and you told them, hey, I want to be your CEO? And they’re like, yeah, we’ve been waiting for you.

Where have you been all our life? So a board position or even an advisory role, that’s a whole higher level. That makes a CEO level even smaller. So how and why do you expect that? First of all, second of all, there are working pieces that, of course, we’re doing all that matchmaking. That can take 30 days just to find appropriate companies that we think they’ll be a good fit for.

Anthony Codispoti : Assuming that the executive is ready. Correct.

Martin Rowinski : Let’s assume they’re ready. Let’s assume they’ve been on a board before. Let’s assume they’ve had great success before. Let’s just perfect executive, ready to be joining a board. Okay, so now we identified companies. Now we’re going to send out their information, their impact report, their LinkedIn. We’re at the mercy of a third party, that company that’s looking for this advisor to come and tell us, one, we want to interview these people, you sent us 20, we want to interview these two. So we’re waiting for that email from them or a phone call from them. And then once that happens, now we got a scheduled interview, obviously, find appropriate time for both parties to meet and interview. And then let’s just say that happens. Let’s say that happens within 30 days. Now they got to make a choice between the two people, five people they interviewed. Who knows how long that takes. So they come back and say, okay, great, we’re going to work with John Smith.

And great. So we put them in connection. You’re on your own at this point, because we’re hands off, we don’t do the contract side or anything. So now they got to work out the contract. You’re telling me you expected all of that to happen in 30 days.

You do not. Okay, so the other side of it, let’s flip it. You as a CEO, you got this ego, you think it should have happened in 30 days. Put yourself in the shoes of the company for one second and say, you’re looking for an advisor.

Do you think within 30 days, you’re ready to make a commitment to somebody without doing your homework, doing your research, googling that person, which is why we tell people to do executive branding so that they can be identified and found easier. Companies can find articles and go, oh my gosh, he’s written an article about whatever the industry, a health industry. And oh, he’s written five articles. Oh, he’s written a book. Wow, this guy’s a real, he’s a thought leader.

Anthony Codispoti : This is the kind of part of the education that you make available to them where you’re coaching them.

Martin Rowinski : Yeah, he’s taken this education courses at Bords Eye, which would be on their profile if they did and finished and took the tests and passed it. So again, put yourself in the company’s shoes. No, these companies can take three, four months before they even get back to us telling us who they want to interview because they’re doing all the research, all the background. Maybe they’re not in a hurry to hire. They shouldn’t be in a hurry.

They should take their time and make sure they bring on and build the right board. So that I went on a tangent there. I’m sorry. But yes, so those people, those people make me laugh. But I’ll tell you what, we did, and this is, this is, I don’t know if this is where they get, maybe they found this article, but we did have a case study about one executive that literally took 30 days.

But there’s a reason behind that. We’ve been working with this company for over six months, and this was a publicly traded company. We’ve presented them hundreds of executives. They were very specific about who they wanted and we really had a hard time finding this person. Not only did they want a female board member, they wanted a female that’s a mom with a very specific age group of kids. I mean, you’re talking about a whole next level of…

Very niche. Yeah, so, you know, we presented great executives, including males, that we were like, hey, we’re running out of options here, but this guy’s a dad. So, I mean, we were trying everything.

So that was over six months of working with them. They were losing a little bit of faith. We kept them.

We’re like, hey, just give us a little bit more time. And literally one day, this executive joined our network and she was the cookie cut perfect fit. I mean, it was just amazing when we found her. So before we even told her anything, as soon as she joined, we sent her profile to that company. We’re like, hey, if this doesn’t work, we’re running out of options.

Like this member just joined. She’s amazing. Look at all she’s done. And sure enough, they went, they did their homework, did their research.

Two days later, they came back to us. They’re like, set up an interview. She interviewed. She’s sharp. She’s been a CMO, which is what they were looking for. Somebody with CMO background for large companies, like huge, very successful. She was a mom.

Anthony Codispoti : I mean, she fit everything. She interviewed flawlessly. A week later, she had an offer. A week later, she accepted. So within 30 days, she got the position. So is it possible? Yes.

What are the odds that stars seriously in the planets have to align? Again, this person, we’ve been working with this company for over six months. How do you think all the other executives feel? Oh, yeah, you’re just stalling on me.

No, we’ve been sweating, working, doing everything that we say we do. It’s just the third party, the company is not looking for you. So is this a mix of old-fashioned, hands-on manual and tech and AI that’s coming together?

Martin Rowinski : Back in those days, I’m talking about this is quite a few years ago, it was a lot more manual. Right now, we’re what we call a hybrid AI. So we do have AI tools for our admins, for our recruiters that help them align those stars a little bit quicker. We do have a lot larger of a network now too. So running through thousands of executives manually would probably miss a lot. So yes, AI can go through and find the closest matches and kind of streamline that into a smaller list. And then we manually, since we call it hybrid, we still manually go through it.

Anthony Codispoti : So you guys sound like you’re doing really well now. Been around for seven years. You’re the founder and the CEO. I’m curious, what is your involvement like today? What sort of functions, what roles are you playing?

Martin Rowinski : I still play a lot of functions. I still am still working. We’re still growing. We’re opening a new office actually on the East Coast now. So going through that. And why? Why do you need that office? Do we need it? Why do you want it? Because we want to pick up East Coast hours.

Okay. Pick up more hours. We’re also thinking it’s going to help us with our international clients who are way ahead, from on the West Coast. They’re eight, nine hours ahead of us. This will put a little bit closer to five, six hours ahead of us. So it just makes things a little bit easier and it would be great. One of our partners moved on the East Coast. So there’s another reason right there. But yeah, no, it’s your typical CEO. Still involved day to day.

Anthony Codispoti : Are you doing like a lot of biz dev? Are you going out and finding new companies to bring in?

Martin Rowinski : One of our partners, he’s dedicated to bringing on the companies. So he runs that. Sorry. So I wouldn’t say, yeah, I wouldn’t say I’m like involved on that side. I’m involved, but not like digging in daily.

Anthony Codispoti : So you guys are opening up this new office on the East Coast so that you’ve got more coverage for East Coast hours and international hours a little closer to them. What other things are you guys working on in terms of growth, new projects, new services?

Martin Rowinski : A lot of tech. Just keep improving. We’re just stacking onto it. So I would say there’s a lot of tech development. Of course, always trying to reinvent ad value with marketing. How can we save money in marketing?

It’s always a big expense. Branding, interviews, me being on this interview right there. But yeah, I would say we’re always reinventing and adding value, finding ways and things we can do to help our executives. Branding might expand into even a deeper.

There’s a test we’re running right now with a handful of executives. We might expand our branding efforts even deeper than we have before. So we’re always testing. We’re always growing.

I wouldn’t say we’re ever gonna be comfortable. All the partners are very involved. We’re all hands on deck and how can we be better? How can we do better? Oh, this client wasn’t happy with that. How can we change that? What can we do? So always looking to improve. Continuous improvement.

Anthony Codispoti : Martin, do you guys have any competitors? Is anybody trying to do something similar to you guys? This is a brand new concept to me.

Martin Rowinski : Yeah, no, there is a few. They’re very… So there’s one competitor, and I’m not gonna name any names, but they’re all about board preparation. So education, they do webinars. They do very driven towards the preparation of an executive with not really helping with any placement. Just, hey, we’re gonna help you be ready to be on a board. We obviously have that service. It’s part of it, but we also help finding matches for them, for executives.

And then there’s the flip side. There’s a bunch of websites, and they’re even free. You can join their network for free. And whatever you see, opportunity-wise, if there is any, you can apply to them, but there is no hand-holding. They’re two to three employees, kind of operations that put this together. And they might have one or two, three, five companies maybe that are looking for board members, and they got, because it’s free, they got 200,000 members trying to get a board seat for five companies that they have listed. So I don’t want to say we don’t have competitors.

Anthony Codispoti : But I will say- They’re people trying to do similar things, but you guys are kind of in a class by yourself.

Martin Rowinski : Yeah, we’re over 100 employees. We’re hands-on. We have recruiters. We have customer service. We have our account executives that bring on the onboarding for the executive side. We have account executives on the B2B sides that bring on the companies.

They go through a whole interview process on both sides. So we’re very hands-on, very human, with an AI obviously help out the recruiters on the backside. But we’re not a five-person operation trying to make it look like we’re a large operation. We are a large operation. We have a great platform. We provide everything from board preparation to board placement, services. And we’re very proud of the fact that we’re able to help a lot of companies grow. It’s very, very satisfying.

Anthony Codispoti : And you guys have your own podcast.

Martin Rowinski : Yeah, and we have… Yeah, that I host, yes. What is it called? Where can we find it? Yeah, it’s Boards Eye Leadership Talks.

Anthony Codispoti : Okay, and what would somebody find? What kind of interviews would they hear there?

Martin Rowinski : Yeah, typically, I got lucky. I just did two yesterday and the one I did the week before. So they publish weekly. So there should be one published today, hopefully. But last three people actually spoke quite a bit about board, board work and what it takes to be a board member. So it’s always great to get that perspective. But for the most part, it’s entrepreneurs, C-suite executives, founders that had a great exit. Like I said, I had a ZEC CEO that really talked about his vision for what a board deck should look like and why they do what they do. I’ve had NFL players that have transitioned from NFL into the corporate world or entrepreneurial world. But yeah, it’s very high leadership level. We talk about their personal journey, why they chose what they did, why they do what they do, what’s their passion. Any fails that they’ve had, what’s a learned lesson from it. It’s a half an hour, 25 minutes to 30 minutes max. Quick.

Anthony Codispoti : Sounds good and tell us the name again and they can find it on any of the major projects.

Martin Rowinski : Yeah, they can find it on boardside.com. There’s a whole section under there. But it’s called boardside leadership talks. Yes, you can find all the audio Spotify, Apple, any audio platform. And of course on YouTube, boardside leadership talks.

Anthony Codispoti : So you guys, you’ve grown to 100 employees, which sounds like a pretty significant headcount for this type of organization. That’s off to you. What do you look for in somebody to join your team? What’s either the personality traits or the skills? Like how do you sort of determine if they’re gonna be a fit for boardside?

Martin Rowinski : Try to find somebody. And of course, there’s the perfect, there’s the okay, let’s see if we can groom them into this. Somebody that’s passionate about what we do. I mean, I don’t just say, hey, mission vision values, you know, board members should match it. Well, so should employees, because then it will bring a little bit more passion. I would say not every single employee is perfect and fits that cookie, but that’s our ultimate goal is be passionate about what we do. The matchmaking we do makes a difference for the executive and for the companies that they join. So it’s a passion project. It’s exciting. It’s pretty awesome.

Anthony Codispoti : And a lot of these folks, maybe they’ve got some kind of recruiting background.

Martin Rowinski : Some do, yes, yeah, but we actually hired quite a few recruiters and there was a handful of them that we really struggled with because they were more stuck in that head of head hunting. And that’s not what we do. It’s quite a bit different.

So sometimes it’s easier to teach a green person than it is to change gears on somebody that’s been doing it for years as a head hunter or as a recruiter for tech company, you know, that all they focused was on, do you know JavaScript? Do you know this? Do you know that?

Do you know C++? That’s what we need. Those things are pretty easy and technical. This is a lot different. So there’s still, whether they have been a recruiter or not, there’s still a lot of learning of the ropes of what we do, but it’s more of a passion if they’re passionate. You know, we encourage them to read the book that I wrote a few years ago called The Corporate Matchmaker which really explains both sides. It explains the side of executive side and then explains the company side and how to put it all together. So yeah. Where can we find the book? Amazon, The Corporate Matchmaker.

Anthony Codispoti : Corporate Matchmaker and we’ll include the link in the show notes. I have a new book coming out too.

Martin Rowinski : Oh, let’s hear about that. What’s the title? Yeah, so the new book, I’m hoping it’s gonna get published this week. Been working with the editor for a while now, but I think they’re finalizing the cover page.

I might’ve gotten an email while we’re doing the talking here, but hopefully it’s coming out this week. But the title is Beyond the Title. And this book is dedicated to executive branding and why we’re so passionate about it, why we wanna help. And I’ll give you that quick why and I kind of already did a little bit, but the why is when we send 20 hundred executives to a company, they will search you. And what we found from after doing this for a few years, trying to figure out why did they pick these people to interview them.

So when we went back and had enough data to actually do some digging of our own, we found the people that the companies would pick for interviews are the ones that had some kind of a mark on there or had a better LinkedIn profile as in filled in all the way and not just their name. So everything out there is being looked at. If you’re looking to grow your career, if you’re looking to get a board seat, you’re being looked at. So you might wanna Google yourself and see what you find.

Anthony Codispoti : And so does this book include tactics on how to sort of work the SEO part of it that is so familiar to you?

Martin Rowinski : Yeah, I would say not the SEO side, but yes, it talks about everything from writing articles to finding your UVP, to getting on podcasts like here, doing an interview, stepping out, making yourself vulnerable to eventually maybe hosting a podcast, like we just talked about like I have. And it breaks it down if you decide to host your podcasts.

Here’s some mic suggestions, here’s some camera suggestions. So it’s a little technical like that. Really try to make it a blueprint. Why and how you can write a book. There’s so many tools out there these days. So it really breaks it down to how simple you can start. There’s free tools out there. LinkedIn has a newsletter section, start posting articles on there if you want. If you’re a member at Boards Eye, of course, you get access to the third party website we run, which is called Liedify. That’s where your biography gets published. That’s where your articles would get published. So there’s a lot of tools out there. If they wanna invest money beyond above what we do at Boards Eye or if they don’t join the network, but they’re like, I always wanted to write for entrepreneur. There’s ways to do that.

You have to qualify that there is ways to do that. So I still to this day, I used to write for Forbes, Fast Company, Entrepreneur and Inc. That was actually overwhelming, to be honest with you. So I write for entrepreneur, Inc. And that’s it, I think.

Anthony Codispoti : And what’s the benefit for you? It’s just that personal branding component. I’m gonna guess they don’t pay a whole lot.

Martin Rowinski : No, it’s personal branding. No, they don’t pay. It’s personal branding. It’s a way for me to give back. I write a lot of leadership articles. I’ve written about executive branding, why do it?

So it’s just a way to get the word out there. I’ve written about empathy and leadership. A lot of leadership stuff that I think it’s important and kind of get it out there. The more people read it, I’m just looking to encourage somebody to be a better leader. And if it’s one person a year, great. I did my job. We just got featured in USA Today, which was pretty awesome. Yeah.

Anthony Codispoti : That’s cool. Was SEO or is SEO helpful in building Boards Eye to where it is today?

Martin Rowinski : It wasn’t focused, but we followed the pattern that we discovered a few years ago, obviously. And yes, I think it is because we do come up for a lot of terms when it comes to board stuff. And we’ve seen our traffic explode. So yeah, I guess you can say yes at the end of the day.

Anthony Codispoti : Because of all the content that you guys have created and put out there.

Martin Rowinski : We write a lot of articles and publish them on Boards Eye, all board related.

Anthony Codispoti : Yeah. We kind of talked about a couple of pretty significant challenges in your professional career. But maybe we can find another one, whether it’s professional or personal, a serious challenge that you’ve overcome. Maybe go into it a little bit more. What was it? How’d you get through it? What’d you learn coming out of it? Are you ready for this? I’m ready.

Martin Rowinski : So you heard about my 2008 mortgage meltdown. Yeah. And then of course, new entrepreneurship and the struggles comes around 2009. We’re still going. Comes around 2010. Sorry if I get emotional. This is personal. And it is written in my autobiography that has been published yet, but it’s in works.

So 2010 comes around while all of this garbage that we’re dealing with, including the takeover of the company and chaos. And I’m dating, looking to be engaged and married. My stepson at seven years old gets hit by a car and passes away.

Yeah. I was about 25 minutes away, received the phone call from the other stepparents. They didn’t actually have the details. They just said he’s being taken to a hospital. They can’t get hold of Amy, my wife, or now my wife.

She was obviously with a client in her chair. I said, no problem. I’m on my way, which hospital, this hospital. Okay. I’ll try to get hold of Amy.

I’ll keep calling till she picks up. They said, okay, we’ll see you there. They get hold of our other kids, my son, my daughter and my stepson. Both of my sons, my stepson and my son, jump on their bikes and they’re riding bikes to the hospital.

And my daughter was with her mom, my ex-wife at that time. So she drives her there and meets us all there. My partner ended up driving me because I was in no condition to drive. And he’s trying to encourage me to drive.

He’s driving saying, hey, could just be a broken arm. Don’t stress, don’t put too much stress on you. And the darkest things go through my head. And I finally get hold of my wife after, I don’t know how many times I called her. She finally picks up and I tell her, hey, Carter’s in the hospital. This is the hospital.

I don’t know any details. And she says, oh my gosh, the sirens I heard, that’s what it was, cause she was very near where he was playing. And I said, yeah, that’s probably what it was. And she goes, okay, let me tell my client, I’m leaving right now, I’ll meet you there. So we all meet there, waiting for the doctor to come out. He comes out, he says, hey, Carter’s on life support.

We’re trying everything we can. So obviously it’s not a broken arm. A few minutes later he comes out and he says, you guys should come in and say goodbye. So yeah, now I had that to do with. Okay.

Sorry. It was a lot easier writing about it than talking about it. I was like, wow, Martin, I asked you if you were ready. I wasn’t. How many years ago was this? So this is in 2010. Carter is his name. Yeah, 15 years ago, he was seven.

Anthony Codispoti : How do you even begin to put one foot in front of the other after a day like that?

Martin Rowinski : Faith, that’s all we had. In an incredible community, we grew up, like I said, in a small town and the community was there for us, you know. Because of the whole 2008 debacle, I lost my home. So we were renting. The owner was incredible.

He was like, don’t, I don’t even want you to stress or think about rent. We’re here for you guys. We’ve had donations. We had food.

My wife didn’t have to think about cooking anything for the kids. It was a very tough time that the community really helped us get through. We were supposed to get married that year. Obviously we canceled our wedding, not like we had any plans, but we didn’t even know where we were gonna get married. Our closest friends got together and said, you’re not canceling, you’re gonna have something good happen this year and that’s gonna be our wedding. So yeah, they planned it.

Anthony Codispoti : You’ve got some good folks around you. I did, I do still. You’re still close with these folks today.

Martin Rowinski : I am, we are, yeah. Wow.

Anthony Codispoti : Thank you for sharing that, Martin. I can tell it wasn’t easy. I thought it was gonna be easier. What more can you say about in the months and years that have followed?

Martin Rowinski : It was tough, it was hard, it still is. I have an incredible wife, extremely strong. We realize after years how vulnerable anybody’s life is. It’s not supposed to happen to your kid. You’re not supposed to see that.

Parents should be first to go. But yeah, it’s not easy to move forward, but it’s not impossible, obviously. You just have to focus on what you have. So we did, we focused on the three kids we had. Try to give them the best possible. The best that we could, they were broken. They were very close with Carter. He was the youngest. And just gotta find and focus on the positive things and live day by day, knowing that tomorrow’s not guaranteed.

Anthony Codispoti : Anyone listening, this is a great reminder to go and hug somebody today. Yeah. Whenever you’re close to your kids, your siblings, your parents, your friends, your neighbors, you’re not guaranteed another tomorrow.

Wow. So for you, it was faith, it was family, it was friends. It was focusing on the things that you had. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and trying to be there for

Martin Rowinski : who’s now my wife, but try to be there for my wife. Cause again, it was my stepson that I was very close to, but it was her young, little precious, full of joy boy. And I had to be the rock, so I did the best that I could to be there for her. And by the way, it was my first tattoo.

Anthony Codispoti : I was going to ask if you guys, what do you do for remembrance?

Martin Rowinski : That’s in his hand writing from one of his school assignments.

Anthony Codispoti : Anything that you guys do on a regular basis, talk about him, think about him, remember him, do things hang up in the house or is that too hard?

Martin Rowinski : Yeah, no, there’s pictures of him everywhere. You know, hardest times are his birthdays, Christmas. He loved Christmas.

Anthony Codispoti : Yeah. What were his favorite things to do? His favorite color was green. He sounds like an entrepreneur in the making.

Martin Rowinski : He loves money. He loved green. During our wedding, we had a green dragonfly flying over us. Very cool. Did he play sports? He did, he played soccer. He kind of followed our older kids. I coached soccer for many years.

I didn’t coach him, he was literally just getting started in it. It was very short. Even for his age, he was just a pretty small kid. So it was the cutest thing watching him run around. Yeah, he loved SpongeBob. He loved playing video games.

Anthony Codispoti : Yeah. What was his favorite video game?

Martin Rowinski : Dunjaj, Call of Duty. Yeah. I never let him wear the headset, so I would wear the headset while he was playing. And there would be people talking crap, they always do. I don’t know if he played Call of Duty. Okay.

Anthony Codispoti : You didn’t want him to hear the other players.

Martin Rowinski : No, no. And then he was really good. His kid was good at seven, at six. He was really good.

Anthony Codispoti : Yeah, I would talk crap back to people. I’d be like, you just got smoked by a seven-year-old.

Anthony Codispoti : That’s the ultimate trash talking. Yeah. Oh, thanks for sharing that. It feels like anything else from this point on is sort of less consequential. But there’s one more question I want to wrap up with. Yeah, let’s change gears.

Yeah. So before I do that, I want to do two things. First of all, I’m going to invite all the listeners to go ahead and hit the follow button on their favorite podcast app. Get more great, sometimes emotional content like we’ve had here today with Martin Browinski. Fantastic interview today, the CEO and founder of Boards Eye. Martin, I also want to let people know the best way to either get in touch with you directly or the company or just even to follow your story. What would that be?

Martin Rowinski : Yeah, so I’ll give you everything. BoardsEye.com, B-O-A-R-D-S-I .com. When you come to the website, it breaks down into two sections. If you’re a company looking for advisors, just click on the company section. There’s a, you can schedule an appointment with our B2B team. On the left side is the executive section. If you’re looking to join Boards Eye, take advantage of the education, branding, all that stuff, click on that.

And then you can schedule on that calendar as well with our executive team. And as far as me personally, you can find me and a whole bunch of stuff about me. At BoardsEye.com, I’m sorry, at MartinRowinski.com.

That’s my personal website. If you’re looking for a speaker, I’m available. I can talk about branding, about board placement. If you want everybody to cry in the room, I can talk about what I just shared.

Anthony Codispoti : You’re very versatile that way.

Martin Rowinski : Yeah, I got all kinds of options. You wanna talk about resilience, I’ve been through it all. And here I am. So I do have, like I said, the new book coming out. Beyond the title, you can find information on that and links to it once it’s published on MartinRowinski.com. And my autobiography will be available, hopefully this year at some point. And you can learn even more stuff about me beyond this.

What else? LinkedIn, LinkedIn is the best way to find me and communicate with me. Connect with on LinkedIn, it’s just MartinRowinski. I don’t think there’s that many Martins out there. CEO of BoardsEye.

Anthony Codispoti : We’ll include links to all these things that you’ve mentioned in the show notes and it’d be great to have you back when the book’s published and maybe we could talk about some more things that are in there.

But last question I wanna wrap up with Martin is, as you think about the future BoardsEye, over just the next two to three years, what is it that you’re most excited about?

Martin Rowinski : You know, we’ve been living in this age of AI now for a little bit. And for us short as we’ve lived in it, it itself has improved so much. Like there’s been so many changes in AI. And I am not one of those people that’s fearing of, it’s gonna replace us. AI is gonna kill all of us, terminated days are ahead of us. Love the movie.

But get in the choppa if you want to live. I think AI is a great tool. It’s a great job enhancement tool.

I think more people should use it. It has enhanced our work a lot. We’ve actually, since we initiated using AI since then, we’ve already had updates because it just keeps getting better. So I see us moving forward with more tools, more AI on the back end, maybe even some of it on the front end for the executives. But I think we’re gonna keep growing technology-wise.

And looking for some further expansion internationally, like I said, since we’re adding some three hours to our time zone, hopefully we’ll be able to take care of our international users a little bit more.

Anthony Codispoti : Martin, I wanna be the first one to thank you for sharing both your time and your story with us today. I really appreciate it. Absolutely. Folks, that’s a wrap on another episode of the Inspired Stories podcast. Thanks for learning with us today. Thank you.