Reflections from a Terrible CEO 

What's your favorite TLA? Anyway join the awesome socks and coffee clubs. Socks only available for a few more days: awesomesocks.club coffee is SO FRESH AND SO GOOD: awesomecoffeeclub.com -John

Hank is on a journey of meaning. John is on a journey of meetings.

I so don’t need more socks but “you don’t even feel the toe seam” is probably one of the best selling points for a pair of socks I’ve ever heard

“…Being the tail to your comet is the world’s best job.” That is such a beautiful sentiment, brb crying 😭

I love watching decades worth of love between two brothers expand across the planet. It's beautiful. ❤

What makes a good CEO is having a goal to bring value to customers and care to stake (not share) holders. You are doing great. Thank you.

This community is the best ever. I don't think I can come up with the words to tell you guys how much you give me hope in a broken world

Good Morning John it’s Tuesday. Your CEO skills caused me to purchase the Awsome socks and some wonderful coffee.

You are both lucky to have each other. Hank do what you want. John do what you can. Someday, my dream is to help you on your mission, just as soon as I retire from teaching. ps - I love spreadsheets.

Keep up the great work John. Also Kirkland CEO Pizza John shirt when?

I love these brothers. It’s beautiful to see the love, support and mutual admiration. I’m glad you have each other.

It never stops surprising me how even through cancer your videos make me smile and feel like life is worth living. Very few things in the world are that purely good but you two truly are just good people.

Hank and John are the living embodiments of resilience.

My love for John as we watch him bumble his way through making the best of this situation: 📈📈📈🥰🥰🥰

I love seeing the love and respect that you two have for each other

Y'all have become my equivalent of a household name that you always look forward to seeing them when they pop up. Thank you for existing❤.

I love our community so much.

Please make compression socks in various levels of compression. Some of us who would LOVE to be part of your sock club cannot wear regular socks due to medical issues, and we’d love to have a compression option. Also, they’re good for travel and exercise, too.

John getting the vibe wrong at a business meeting is so unsurprising but endearing. Tryin his best.

I would like to thank RU-vid for making it possible for me to get to know the Green brothers. You have redefined the meaning of the word “awesome”.

"You know, historically I am not good at meetings..😳" made me laugh out loud.

I don't blame you for that video title. If I got to be a stand-in CEO for a limited time I would totally tell everyone I knew that I was a CEO, especially if I wasn't even an office job person in real life. You have to.

The socks are awesome, but their toe seam is GLORIOUS

WHOA that cicada plushie is SO COOL I had no idea who that was 5 minutes ago but I think I love him already

I just want to thank you for bringing up TLAs. I also love how TLA is a TLA and it means three letter acronym. There’s an indescribable beauty there.

Wait until someone explains WAG to John. That's the one that floored me.

my neurospicy brain was like "can't feel the toe seam???"

No wait, that's exactly the vibe of every meeting!

Channel idea - business logic - deep dive into all the intricate aspects of running a business. For instance I am a Technical Consultant for Dynamics 365 Finance and Operations, the setup and time it takes to even turn the software on is insane. Or logistics, use your coffee or socks are examples, she the flow of a product from manufacturer to consumer.

Your hair looks like a toned down version of Hank‘s Mohawk. What a nice gesture.

Adding to the spider idea: a spider plushie to hold pjs but the pjs are covered in a baby spider pattern

In which John Green explains the right vibes for a meeting.

You both make my heart smile 💙

Depressing Existential Anxiety != Good Meeting Vibe, got it

Sometimes you really cant do what you love doing and want to do. Ive been there. It sucks but there is a different kind of space in moments like that to discover what matters.

thank you for that comment about human soul time in meetings. i'm gonna stop feeling guilty about checking out

1st job is to replace one’s self - time is precious. The entrepreneur/individual should strive to find people that can save you time to let you focus, or to find people that can do things better than you. Example: every start-up needs a bathroom. As a 1 person company, the ceo has to clean the toilet. As your company grows, your time is too precious to keep cleaning the toilet. Likewise, if the ceo startup struggles with numbers, hire an accountant. Focus on your strengths and free yourself to be the best you can be. Eventually, you’ll completely replace yourself to start the next company/project. Learn to trust letting go. Raising children is a good model. You can do better than the little kids… but they eventually show strengths (or can be educated to replace functions like laundry, dishes, bicycle repairs, accounting, engineering, sales, creativity…). And they eventually replace us. If we fear being replaced, we’ve been bad parents. 😅 And it feels GREAT to let go and see things grow! If it isn’t growing the way we want, explore the expectations. Proper care and communication (both theirs and our own) should resolve expectation disparity.

1:17 I think about this a lot when creating youtube videos.. I long ago surpassed my lifetime in other-peoples'-watch-time on my channel and it's going faster and faster as more time goes on.. It's really weird to think about.

That's exacly how I feel about meetings. Never have I heard it expressed so succinctly. That's why we need authors 😁

Okay, I really want to talk about the spider plushies. Especially if they were the cute "Lucas the Spider" kind of design.

Is John subconsciously getting his hair cut closer and closer to a mohawk also?

"you got fired by cancer" brutal but kinda funny. What are things only John can say 😅

Love to you and Hank. ❤❤

To state the obvious, John is almost definitely a better CEO than he gives himself credit for.

' Kicked Up Stairs ! '

Is the Timeline of Complex life 3:01 on DFTBA? I feel like I scrolled through a million cool things, but didn't see it

I think the sign that these companies have truly matured is that they can survive having John in charge.

I'm not normally a plushie person but actually 12 baby spider plushies that I can tuck inside of a mommy spider plushie is a thing I would like to own!

I am the chair of the Spider and Scorpion Specialist Group and I would be excited to support the spider plushy with litle spiders inside. Let's talk.

Ngl I thought this was gonna be about the Titan submersible disaster.

This made me kinda emotional

If only other companies were dealing with some type of social justice whys and every CEO would be so introspective. Stay awesome!

i NEED the spider plushie it's an amazing idea

The way to keep meeting short is to remove the chairs.

Part-time, temporary, reluctant, marginally competent. I am stealing these adjectives to put in front of the diverse titles people ask me to temporarily take on.

“Being the tail to your comet is the worlds best job” is making me cry

you're doing great john, i'm rooting for you :)

with hank's recent mohawk and john's perpetual crazy hair, the resemblance the green brothers share is becoming stronger than ever

A spider plushie filled with baby spider plushies is perhaps one of the worst million dollar ideas Hank has ever had.

I would like to see a DFTBA episode of Undercover Boss where John wears a really low quality disguise where he just keeps doing exactly what he's doing around the warehouse, office, etc.

I both desperately want a spider baby plushie and I'm horrified at the thought of its existence.

Keep it up, John. You can do it. Big shoes to fill, but we believe in you.

The most important question a CEO can ask is "What do you need from me?". The best CEOs lead by letting their employees operate at maximum capacity.

When he says "Style: impacable, fit: incredible, mission: charitable" I really feel John Green trying for light-hearted Hank Green enthusiasm and it somehow warms my heart.

John went from being unpaid intern for a coffee company to bring an unpaid CEO for two companies

Years of 4-minute videos have trained my brain so well that about 10 seconds past that ordinary deadline, I was compelled to check the time. You guys have given us an innate understanding of what 240 seconds feels like.

John, nerdfighters, the whole internet, and presumably everyone who loves Hank irl: TAKE A BREAK Hank: Well now you’ve told me to do it I won’t do it.

As a writer at a physical weekly newspaper, Hank’s love and support for print media makes me smile!

John, you are far more than just 'the tail to Hank's comet' but holy crap that is a wonderfully poetic and beautiful way of phrasing your feeling about it.

Hank does more with cancer than I do without

John may only be a "marginally competent" CEO, but he's clearly an amazing big brother ❤

I’m so glad that Hank has the opportunity to step back from his responsibilities while going through chemo. I know a lot of people who continued working through most of their cancer treatment (the US healthcare system is a joke). That being said, I’m not at all surprised that he’s continued to do a bunch of things. We went from 400% Hank to like 120% Hank

"Being the tail to your comet is the world's best possible job." I love that John and Hank both see each other as the biggest Green brother

Johns pretty good at the CEO speak. The 3 whys were pretty powerful.

I love that the title of this video has changed from “I’m a great CEO” to “Reflections from a Terrible CEO” 😂

John, you're doing great. We can't all be Hanks.

John, You’ve hopefully gotten at least 1 million messages of hope and support for Hank (and yourself) while you and your families deal with it. Something I thought I would mention, in case Hank doesn’t know and he wants it: he can ask the pathology lab for recuts of biopsies. Basically, he can ask for his cancer on a microscope slide that a pathologist looked at and diagnosed. I know he loves microscopy. And that seems like a pretty BA thing to have. Maybe even framed or something. Who knows, he could have a tee shirt pattern made of it. Here’s hoping one day you get to see this because even if it’s many years later, the hospital will keep those slides for years and years. I’ve followed you from 2007 and this is the first time I’ve written though I have heard you speak in person before. Here’s to another 16 years of you and Hank.

I am absolutely, 200% *here* for a spider plushie that contains 12 spider plushies within it-- I don't know what John's thoughts were, but I /love/ that design idea. :D Edit: I'm so glad you're enjoying aspects of the unexpected promotion, John. Despite it coming out of unfortunate and painful circumstances, it's good to hear the new reluctant CEO is doing well. DFTBA!

No parasocial relationship aside from this one could make my heart explode with this much love.

The Aldi version of Hank Green is a stellar product

Replace Hank as CEO temporarily you have to do a good job

I love this because it's a perfect demonstration of _appreciation_ and finding the value in something that you'd otherwise never have experienced, and don't necessarily want to always experience, but can allow you to love doing it while you do it and what you get to go back to doing at some point after even more.

I love the idea that up till now youve been sitting quietly at meetings and occasionally you'll pipe up just to say that interestingly everyone there has consumed 300 minutes of time on earth in this meeting. Then hank will say thank you for that observation john and that will have been your entire contribution till the meeting ends and you all leave. As someone who is also president of a not for profit that is exactly what i cant wait to step down and do.

John may not have all of the business skills CEOs usually have but he sure does know how to plug things in vlogbrothers videos

Just every video lately makes me tear up in gratefulness. Thank you for your continued efforts to make the world kinder. Thank you for your voices and your presence and your commitment to all the bits. Prouder than ever to be part of this community.

“Being the tail to your comet is the world’s best job” why am I crying. John so admires Hank and it’s heartbreakingly sweet

While I agree with all the support that this community gives to Hank, I often think of Katherine, because I have seen the toll cancer can have on a spouse. Katherine, I hope you take good care of yourself!!!

John, you're doing amazing sweetie. Hank, if the "plushies within plushies" idea at 0:45 is a real thing you were pitching, you should know that yes, those do exist. Or at least they used to in the 90s, usually in the form of a "buy this mother dog plushie and unzip her tummy to see how many puppies came inside her" kind of thing. Never seen a spider version though!

"That's like 300 minutes of human soul-life, just....GONE!!" I feel that, as I walk into a "mandatory" daily corporate meeting that wastes 300 minutes of human soul-life, to discuss something that could've been an email

Now that John has become a good CEO, he needs to also become big on LinkedIn

This is what makes the Greens so awesome - they've spent 16+ years being sincerely kind to each other. So when the shit hits the fan & they may be having big feelings, there's nothing remotely unnatural or awkward about them being sincere & kind to each other on a public forum. It's a tragedy that so many of us don't have that kind of relationship with our families & friends

If Hank scrolls through the comments: we will all understand if you can t post videos.we just want you to rest and support you in whatever you want to do.

Don’t forget to talk to someone if you get overwhelmed. Support roles in health situations also get exhausted. Don’t carry that weight all by yourself. ❤

Why does Johns description of his feelings about being CEO for a bit sound like many intentionally childless peoples feelings about kids? Y'know the whole "oh I do like kids, as long as i can hand them back to their parents after a few hours"😂

"When I'm forced to attend a meeting, by far my most common contribution is to say, 'so, are we done then?', I usually saying that like 12 seconds into a meeting and then repeat it, mantra-like, until finally I am released." - John Green, 2017

I wish both of you the best. The microcosmos microscope I bought has been life changing. My wife, dodgeball team, and work have all been harassed with my excitement. There are amazing new things I find every week. Wish the best for you and your brother.

The smile when you said "mission: charitable" genuinely made my day It's as if you were equally proud and ashamed of coming up with that line :)

I said this before but I will say it again, John you are doing a great job guiding this community and I’m sure your employees through this turbulence. Thanks captain.

Loving the solidarity John's temple hairs are showing with Hank by turning white and making it look like John too has a mohawk

After 38 years of employment I can say with great confidence that 1:28 is exactly the vibe of the vast majority of meetings.