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[upbeat music] Hi, everyone. Welcome. I'm Scott, founder of Chief of Staff Network. I'm joined by Tom Guthrie. Good to see you all. Tom Guthrie, uh, president of Chief of Staff Network.

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And we're, uh, both thrilled to be here with you today. We are getting ready to announce the Chief of Staff Connect conferences this year, um, which is gonna be bigger than ever. We're rolling out to multiple cities.

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We'll share those a little later on in the episode.

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But today, we wanted to talk a little bit more about kinda why we're doing Chief of Staff Connect, what, what were some of the learnings from last year, what the chiefs of staff take away from the events, and why we're making this bigger than ever this year.

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Let's get into it. Yeah, it's exciting. Looking back at twenty twenty-five, there were really three kinda key flagship events that we launched: San Francisco, London, and our main event in New York.

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Across all three of those events, we had close to five hundred chief of staff attend.

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The theme last year was all about AI coming into the workplace and how chiefs of staff are really there to draw, you know, human alignment, kind of as these organizations are transforming under our feet.

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Chiefs of staff are very much, like, the first people to experiment with AI tools because they're already wearing ten hats. AI obviously presents lots of opportunities for them to get kind of those quick wins.

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But in twenty twenty-five, you know, the real question that chiefs of staff are asking is, "How do I lead AI transformation for my executive and for my company?"

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And so that was a major theme that was kinda touched upon in each of the Chief of Staff Connect events last year.

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The other kind of, I think, big reason that we're continuing to bring Connect back this year is that the loneliness factor for chiefs of staff just continues to evolve.

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Chiefs of staff are very often the only chief of staff in their organization.

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You know, there are certainly exceptions for large companies where there are teams of chiefs of staff, but even in those cases, they're very often working alone.

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And, you know, today more than ever, with AI kinda creeping into the organization, chiefs of staff are operating in very uncharted territories.

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They are essentially building the plane while trying to fly in it, and that can feel terribly lonely when you're the only one trying to figure that out.

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And so Connect is an opportunity to bring people together to learn from each other.

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And, and we always like to say, as much as we're learning from, you know, the coaches and executives on stage who are presenting, even more importantly, we're learning together at the roundtables, you know, in, in kind of these purpose-built groups that Connect really facilitates.

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So with those themes in mind from last year, what we saw this year and the opportunity that we want to present to you all and the theme that we're really going to be exploring across all of our programming, but Connect's in particular, is the theme of chiefs of staff as builders.

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Um, I think for too long, chiefs of staff has be- have been seen more as an admin function and folks who can manage calendars or manage executive team meetings, plan off-sites, maybe do some OKR work, maybe do some strategy work.

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But you and I know that chiefs of staff are more integral to an organization than that.

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They are the ones that can catalyze the vision of a founder or a principal into something that actually meets reality and creates something great, that builds something great.

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And so how do we double down on that reality that you all are operating in now, but also spread that message more widely by showing the impact that chiefs of staff can have in tangible terms, in growth, in efficiency, in scale, right?

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And so that's what we're going to be exploring throughout twenty twenty-six.

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Um, obviously, there's an AI component to that, and chiefs of staff can be more powerful and, and impactful than ever by using AI tools effectively. But it's not just that, right?

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It's how do you harness the people in your organization? How do you do storytelling the right way?

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How do you maintain and build a great relationship with your principal that allows you to enable their vision and expand on it?

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Um, all these things and more, I think, are wrapped up in this chief of staff as builder theme, and we're excited to discuss it with you, learn from you, and, and hopefully advance this profession together over the next year.

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So how do we think about kinda designing Connect this year in twenty twenty-six? I guess to start, you know, we're going to continue focusing on our three tentpole events. So London, NYC, San Francisco.

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These are big markets for chiefs of staff, big markets for technology companies, Fortune five hundred enterprise, nonprofits, education alike.

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And so we will continue to have kind of our marquee events in these three cities. And each of those events will be bigger, right? We're expanding capacity.

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Um, last year we sold out London, NYC, and San Francisco, so you'll see bigger venues this year. They're also gonna be more practical, right? So less theory, more takeaways.

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Last year, we really focused on bringing, you know, deep integrated workshops where every chief of staff had the opportunity to participate very actively with the speakers on stage and together at their roundtables.

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Our goal is to have attendees leave with frameworks that they can implement the following Monday morning. And finally, they're gonna be, you know, more cutting edge, right?

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Like, we're, we're bringing kinda more peer-to-peer learning, uh, more breakout discussions, more small, small group work, and, you know, allowing people to share their challenges that they're facing in real time and getting real-time feedback on how to go solve those things.

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So that's what we're doing in, in our three tentpole markets.

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But we said at the beginning that we're gonna be expanding these Connects into new places, new cities, and so I wanna tell you a little bit about that as well.

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We're expanding by launching a new model for Chief of Staff Connect, which we're calling Chief of Staff Connect Forums, which are a bit more intimate summits. They're designed to help

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in locations where the community and the roleNeeds to be developed and, and activated, right? There are chiefs of staff in all these places, but maybe there hasn't been a systematic effort to bring them together.

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We wanna bring you, you all together in these new markets for us at least. We know some of you are already gathering.

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We have chapters in some of these places already, but we think by catalyzing this growth through these Chief of Staff Connect forums, we can help bring even more of you together and, and help these learnings within these markets.

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So where are we launching? Our first one's coming up soon. It's Dubai in April, uh, and we're, we're looking to sol-- uh, serve the Gulf region with that one. Then we've got Austin in June,

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Berlin in July, and Singapore in December. And that's obviously in addition to the, the three in San Francisco, New York, and London throughout the year.

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So these Chief of Staff Connect forums are gonna be about fifty attendees, pretty limited.

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Um, you know, we're gonna be inviting a lot of people to these, so if you're interested, we encourage you to express that interest and, and get a ticket pretty quickly because they're gonna sell out soon.

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They're gonna be one day, so it's efficient. You don't have to take off a bunch of time from work.

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Um, they're gonna continue to focus on practical learnings and workshops so that by taking that one day to connect with peers, you can then multiply the impact of the work that you're having the next day when you go back into work.

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Um,

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and one of our focuses is to bring new members into the network, bring new perspectives, bring, bring people from distinct geographies where the chief of staff role is really growing quickly, but, um, maybe there hasn't been this infrastructure yet for, for folks to connect, which we know we personally found super valuable when we were chiefs of staff, and we hear every day from our members that this is the most valuable thing that we bring is the opportunity to connect with other peers.

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So Dubai, Austin, Berlin, Singapore, those are the new locations that we're launching this year. I'm excited for it.

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Every ticket that you purchase for a forum event will also include access to our pro membership for the entire year.

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And so, you know, this gives you kind of unparalleled access to nine hundred plus chiefs of staff on an ongoing basis, regular events and programs that the community is holding throughout the year,

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in addition to the one-day connect forum event that you can attend live to meet other chiefs of staff in your area. Everything is live right now at chiefofstaffconnect.com.

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You can see the full lineup for London, New York, and San Francisco, along with all of the Connect forum events, and you can reserve your spot today.

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We have group rates, so if you've got multiple chiefs of staff working at your organization, please reach out to us at hi@chiefofstaff.network, and we'll be happy to offer you a group rate.

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And look, if you're a chief of staff, you know, trying to figure out how to go from reacting to building, this is your opportunity.

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We've got tons of programs within the Chief of Staff Network, but honestly, nothing beats meeting in person, meeting other chiefs of staff that are kind of in your shoes and sharing real-time insights, feedback, and questions, um, with those other members.

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So London, New York, San Francisco, Dubai, Austin, Singapore, Berlin, this is your year to come to connect. We hope to see you there. Can't wait.

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[upbeat music]