If you had to start a company and could take any five Star Wars characters, who would you take? That is exactly what Frank and I set out to do in this fantasy Star Wars draft with a business slant. The ground rules are simple: Any character from the first three Star Wars movies (IV, V, VI) are eligible. How do you pick between a jedi, a wookie, a droid, or a princess? Tune it to find out.

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The Star Wars Office Draft

The Characters We Would Hire For Any Startup Company

This is Episode 64. Ironically, this is the 3rd or 4th outline that Frank and I have ever created for the show. We built this outline a few years ago and for whatever reason, we forgot about it and we’re dusting it off. We found it and we thought, “Why didn’t we do that? That sounds like a lot of fun.” Now, we are doing a Star Wars office draft. Frank and I each get five picks. We go and snake draft order like a fantasy draft, and all characters from New Hope to Return of the Jedi are on the board.

We are trying to build the best team we could if we were to start a company with only five characters from Star Wars. We hope you guys enjoy reading this episode as much as we enjoyed making it. If you are new to our show, please subscribe. If you’re one of our long-time readers, get your butt on Apple Podcasts and give us a five-star review.

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Frankie.

Ian, you son of a bitch.

I don’t know if you know this, but this was the second outline we’ve put together. This was supposed to be episode three. We never could quite agree on the outline or how we were going to end up making this work. We ended up doing Godfather instead of this episode. We haven’t completely agreed on the rules yet but we are doing Star Wars.

This is what it’s like to be in a Fantasy League with the end. You don’t completely agree on the rules until you’re on the clock and then he changes them anyway if they don’t benefit him. My wife is convinced that Ian cheats.

Eli is convinced that I cheat and the reason is because Frank has been in this league for years and never made a goddamn dollar in it. He’s lost every single season. He’s the biggest loser in the entire league. She thinks there’s no way that someone as smart as Frank could be so terrible at something that he puts this much time into. I can understand if I were facing someone to beat me repeatedly, I would probably think they were cheating after a while as well. I understand Eli’s thoughts.

Here are the rules. If we were to build a startup company from scratch with only Star Wars characters, who would we take? We each get five characters to go build any business. We have five characters and we are picking these based on the most redeeming qualities that we believe are in this. Some rules that go along with this are we are only choosing characters from New Hope, Empire Strikes Back, and Return of the Jedi. The reason is all the other movies sucked and none of those characters matter. As anyone who’s ever watched any Star Wars knows there are only three movies worth watching, and we are only choosing characters from those episodes. All the rest, in my eyes, never happened.

Like the most basic things, I completely disagree with Ian. Episode one was terrible. Episode two was okay. Episode three I thought was quite good, especially at the last 30 minutes. Episodes 4, 5 and 6 are clearly amazing. Episodes 7 and 8 were awesome. Episode 9 was worse than episode 1.

Princess Leia is rich and spoiled, and yet she chooses to grind. This is because she believes in the cause. Click To Tweet

Episode 9 was a disaster but I fell asleep in episode 8 too. I didn’t like that so much.

I liked them. The red underneath the salt was cool.

Those are the characters we have to go off of. This is a snake draft, meaning one of us goes, the other one goes, and we go around. Who has the number one draft pick?

Ian, since you do all the work on this show, why don’t we give you the number one draft pick?

I feel like this episode could go fast because of Frank’s style, I have a feeling he’s going to say, “I’ll take five Stormtroopers because I’m so smart that I need a few idiots to do some groundwork for me.” That’s his style of leadership. With the number one draft pick, I am going to go with Princess Leia. I am coming right out of the gate. I don’t want anyone to say that there was any diversity issue on my team right out of the gate. I want to show my team how serious I am.

I love Princess Leia because she is rich. She could be a spoiled little fart and yet she chooses to grind, which is the opposite of most rich, spoiled little farts. She’s brave and puts her life in jeopardy. She’s got massive cojones. She stands up to Darth Vader and Jabba the Hutt. She risked torture. She is someone who believes in the cause. If I am starting a company, you have to have a mission. You have to have people that care about the mission, and she believes in the mission. She can’t be bought. She is the stronger of the two siblings and becomes a military genius.

She’s the smartest of all the Star Wars characters from strategy. She’s got a lot of pros. Her only cons are she’s prone to office romances. It could be an HR issue. She kisses her brother a little too intimately at times, which is also a little creepy out in the office. She might not blend in with the lunch crowd going to McDonald’s. She’s probably a little too hoity-toity.

At some point, she’s definitely going to take my job. Probably the biggest con is that I’m not as competent as Princess Leia, so I would have to worry about the board moving me out and moving her into a CEO role if I had a couple of bad quarters in a row. This is about the safest pick you could take right out of the gate for the number one pick. Princess Leia has her shit together.

 

I’m glad you picked her. Throughout the course of the season, you’re going to see that I picked the smarter pick first. I’m going with her more popular brother, Luke. I put my first pick on straight chalk. A little bit of a rube in beginning. He runs his mouth a little bit too much at times and sometimes can be a bit of a hothead.

However, over the course of the three movies, he grows up and grows into something. He is going the way of the machine. If you’ve ever watched Terminator or read the book Sapiens, you know that we’re all turning into machines. He’s already 1/16 there since his arm was cut off and he had to come back with metal. Possibly the coolest moment in my thematic history was when I was eight years old and Star Wars Return of the Jedi came out.

I remember how excited I was when Luke popped up and he had the green lightsaber. I was like, “They went green.” I remember almost spilling my entire popcorn. I was very excited about that. In all seriousness, the reason that I think Luke is the best or a good first pick is he is the hope. He’s the last of the breed and he is someone who the future staked on which is a lot of pressure. He’s able to perform and grow. You want someone to come in with real talent, but then you’ve got to harness that talent in an office. I believe that he’s the pick for me for that reason.

You said something that I hadn’t thought of that I liked. I got to give you kudos on it. He does have an incredible hero’s arc, which means he is adaptable, coachable and can grow. That’s what you want in a startup. It is someone whose skills help you now, but they can grow with your company over 5 to 10 years, and become someone who is a better version of who they are now.

When you start a company, you need people that can grow with the challenges of the company and as the company gets more complex, are they able to handle it? Luke starts as a little farm boy and ends up pretty much running the rebellion with his sister. He grows throughout the whole process. Princess Leia is a stud right from the start and still a stud in the last movies. Luke is a loser as he starts and grows into the leader that he is. Princess Leia is the straight leader right out of the gate.

What we learned in episode 3 if you had watched it is that they were trying to hide the kids from the father who is Darth Vader. They split them up and put Leia with a prince and a princess. That’s the reason why she became Princess Leia. They stuck Luke on a farm. I used the word rube intentionally. He was made to look like that because they wanted to hide him. He did grow, progress and came off as a bit of a punk in the first one, but by Return of the Jedi, he was a master. He had a lot of struggles too if you think about when he went to see Yoda and couldn’t do the job. He couldn’t do the work that required some mental fortitude to get through it.

My only rebuttal and the reason why I chose Leia over Luke is he’s a bit of a whiny bitch. That’s my only rebuttal. He seems to always be complaining, whining and scared. I feel that he would be a high maintenance employee to have to deal with who’s always nervous and asking like, “How am I doing? Am I doing okay?” I would have to every day pat him on the head. Whereas Princess Leia has a lot more confidence and I wouldn’t have to pat her on the head all the time.

My second pick is Obi-Wan Kenobi. The older and seasoned understands. He can teach, train and smell better than Yoda. From an office standpoint, you want to have someone around that other people like to be around. I liken this to the first CFO I ever hired. The first CFO I ever hired is 72 now, but he was in his high 60s and retired. He was 68 when we hired him and he was part-time but the point is he knew it. He’d seen and done it. We could rely on him.

He was smart. He could help us do all things that we couldn’t do now like if you took a farm boy and you turn them into a badass. He could build all types of stuff in front of us. Is he a long-term hire? Is he someone who’s going to be there in 25 years? No, Obi-Wan didn’t even make it out of the first episode, but he knew how to sacrifice when to sacrifice and he was an incredible mentor. From that perspective, there’s an incredible overlap between the fictional world here and the office world. Sometimes with a startup, you need to have someone who understands, has a broader perspective, can teach and train a lot of the people that are inside of the organization.

Someone like Obi-Wan might not be long-term hires, but they know how to sacrifice and when to sacrifice for something. Click To Tweet

I agree with you, you need a good mentor in every office. Some of my most formative years, my first five years out of college, it was the graybeards that have been around for 35 years that I gravitated towards. I always wanted to be asking them questions. There was a guy by the name of Jim Reichle who was one year from retiring when I started. I dragged that son of a bitch to every meeting. He was like Danny Glover in Lethal Weapon that wanted to retire but Mel Gibson was driving him crazy.

I took him to every meeting and I felt so much more confidence when he was there, and he’d give me great feedback after, but I had a number of them. Mentors matter. What I would say is Obi-Wan gets a little too much credit for being a great mentor. If I’m being honest, he’s 50/50. He’s done a great job on one side with Luke, but how do you do with Darth Vader? Not so good. He set some things in motion as a bad mentor in that regard. His best years are behind him, so if I’m starting a company, I don’t know if I want someone who’s on their absolute last legs. His only real combat is an ass-kicking at the hands of Darth Vader. You probably could have done a little better with your second pick.

I will say this about Obi-Wan. The hardest thing about starting a company is getting your first new sales. I would love to have Obi-Wan on my team because of his ability to work Jedi mind tricks. He would be awesome in sales. I would probably put him in sales right out of the gate if that was my second employee and I would have him absolutely working customers over for better margins and more sales. You have two of them. From a sales perspective, you’re way out ahead of me because Luke is also very good at the Jedi mind tricks of getting what he wants.

My second employee might be a bit of a surprise. I am going to go with R2-D2 as my second hire. As the founder, I already have a very fiery leader who is full of piss and vinegar, brave out there and good, strategic and smart thinker. Any good startup business needs some early folks that are willing to do the dirty work on the frontline, are loyal and will stay with you when you go through those shitty months and even years when you’re not executing where you want, and where everything is imperfect. R2-D2 is super smart and loyal.

We could probably hire them cheap. We got them off the junk pile, so he’s not going to be too expensive for our startup. He always exceeds expectations. You don’t expect a lot out of him but he always ends up making things work. He’s the one that got a message. We talk about getting a message to Garcia. He got a message from Leia. Who did the princess trust to get that message? She trusted R2-D2.

His wins against replacement are high. It’s hard to replace R2-D2. If you need to get into a door, he can fix shit. He is an out-of-the-box thinker. If one of his keys isn’t working, he’ll shoot some electricity into it and mess with it. He’s opening things and everyone seems to like him. No one in any of the three movies said that R2-D2 is a dick. He’s good for morale in the office and that’s important. You need someone who is going to show up every day and bring everything. Do you have a rebuttal?

No rebuttal. What I would tell you is he possibly is not tapping into all of these skills that he could. He could be your IT man, fix all your computers, and clearly and fix any locks. Based upon what I know of him, he’s probably a wizard on the internet. He’s probably great with social media and could build a campaign for you. There are a lot of positives. The thing I liked the best about R2-D2 is he doesn’t talk back. He beeps like, “Fine. Perfect.” My kind of employee.

If R2-D2 worked for Frank, he would be bringing in coffee all day. He would be getting Frank’s lunch order on a regular basis. Every time Frank’s computer glitches, he’s in there all day messing around with it. R2-D2 would never leave. He would be like Luke. R2-D2 would follow you around the office and do little things, which is exactly how Frank likes to work.

I am going to go with my third pick. You have a good mentor. You have a wise sage. I need one and I’m going to go with Yoda. The pro is a little bit like R2-D2. In my business, I’m going to save a little bit of money on Frank with office space. The cubicles for R2-D2 and Yoda are going to be much smaller than the average. From a dollar per square foot, I’m going to save some money with my small team. I got R2-D2, so I’ve got the IT guy.

 

Yoda’s not going to be your IT guy. He’s not going to be on email. He’s going to be a little bit like my first boss at NVR. He did not have a computer that he uses. He’s probably going to need R2 to send and receive most of the things that he needs to save. I could save a little on technology with Yoda, but similar to Obi-Wan, he tends to know what’s going to happen before it happens. He’s good at seeing into the future. He’s got a strategic mindset and a pretty good mentor when it comes down to it.

I would give more of the credit to Luke becoming who he is to Yoda than I would with Obi-Wan. What he does well and he does it really well is people are always coming to him asking for advice. He has hundreds of years of experience. My sage has much more experience than Obi-Wan probably 700 more years of experience. That’s good. A little bit like Obi-Wan though is I’m not sure how long he’s going to make it into the progression of our startup. He’s old when I’m hiring him. He’s probably slowing down, a little lazy and sleeps.

I think this would be like a Warren Buffett’s hire. He’d be in his office and he would read all day and his door would always be open if you wanted to go talk to him. He wouldn’t do a lot but the things he would do would be to make smart decisions, but only a few of them a week. What’s important early in a startup is that you’re going in the right direction. Knowing where to go and what to do are two different things. If you can figure out where to go and what moves to make, it’s easier to find people to help you execute.

He’s a fine choice. I wonder how many productive years he has left, but I understand the allure of Yoda.

He’s a little passive-aggressive and we don’t like passive-aggressive in an office so much. That is an issue. That would get old with some people to have him speaking in riddles all the time and backwards.

His communication style could be problematic. You can’t recruit around him. He’s good for office morale. David Letterman used to have a segment, Stupid Human Tricks, where he do some fun shit with him from that perspective.

He’s a little lazy and doesn’t like to work much, so that’s a bit of an issue.

With my next pick, I’m going a little bit off-topic or going for deep value. I’m going with Wedge Antilles. In all 3 of 4, 5 and 6 was Wedge. He’s a talented young rebel pilot in case you’re unaware. He led the Rogue Squadron. He piloted a Snowspeeder in episode 5. He made it to Captain’s rank. It’s not too dissimilar from Luke. He started off as a rank and file type and made it up to Captain inside of two episodes.

As someone who was relied upon, he shot one of the major shots that brought down the Death Star. Ultimately, our boy Luke is the one who made it. The point of the matter is this is a good worker bee. He’s someone who’s smart and upwardly mobile. He doesn’t have a lot of the problems or the baggage that we know about. Inside of an office, you need people who can come in and do the job. He has some upper mobility and doesn’t want to be in the same job in five years. He wants to have some growth. He was a good sensible pick here.

People who have no baggage or stories are the best to manage. They're all about execution and no drama. Click To Tweet

I love this pick. This has deep value. One thing you said is important. There is no baggage, no stories, and no drama around this person. Every time you see him on the screen, he’s producing. All he does is execute. It’s fun to manage people like that. It’s like Chris Carter, all you do is score touchdowns. I love employees like that where you don’t get caught up in any of their stories because there are no stories. They’re too busy grinding out production. That’s an amazing pick.

I’m going to pick next, the Imperial Walkers. I don’t know how many I’m allowed to draft if it’s one or a multitude, but the way that I look at it, we could have probably gotten the Millennium Falcon and flown around, but I don’t know how to fly and I don’t know if we’re going into another territory or not. For me, the Imperial Walker is a good one. It can do all kinds of good stuff. It can move shit, lift things up, and destroy things. There are endless possibilities. As a manager, you are the only limitation to an Imperial Walker. Having a good and strong presence with the Old Guard and Obi-Wan, I’m sure Luke can drive it. I would be shocked if Wedge can’t. For me, Imperial Walker is my fourth pick.

Isn’t it a little limited? The whole premise of Star Wars is you’re up in the stars. You’re in space. This thing can’t fly. If you’re going to pick a vehicle, wouldn’t you pick something that could do well on the ground and up in the air?

I don’t know what my business is. Maybe your business model brings you all around the world. Mine keeps me pretty limited. I’m just in Richmond, Virginia. If I’m building a startup, I want to get shit done here.

I’ll go ahead and allow it. I am going to go with my fourth pick. I’m going to go with C-3PO. He speaks six million forms of communication, including Spanish. He’s incredibly intelligent, doesn’t eat much, doesn’t require much pay, is incredibly loyal and similar to R2-D2. We’ve talked about the importance of partners and people you’ve worked with a long time. I feel like he immediately adds value to R2-D2 and R2-D2 adds value to C-3PO. If you got either one of those two on your team without the other, they wouldn’t be as effective. They complete each other.

In any startup, you can’t just hire people that are hard workers and grinders. You need some brains. If you’re starting anything and you are trying to create a moat, you need someone who can out-think the competition. C-3PO is very good with statistics, probabilities and thinking through different processes.

Having that kind of intelligence is like bringing in the engineer on your team, the star engineer from another company that’s going to help you design a product or anything. You need a little bit of that. You’re going to run into some issues with having to boost his self-confidence. My team could use a little more self-confidence, so that’s a problem. He’s constantly worrying. I wanted to add some brains to this team so I didn’t have to do all of the thinking, and C-3PO brings plenty of that.

I’m married to a linguist. I don’t need someone who can speak 6,000 languages. I’ve already got that at home. I believe C-3PO is the only character in all three episodes that we’re discussing who’s been shut off because he was so annoying. That could be a good thing. He comes with his own mute button, which is great, but he’s also not up on current events or paying attention to other people. I’m curious what his situational awareness is.

 

It’s an understandable pick. He would go well with R2-D2. They have a lot of history together. It’s like we’ve seen in the NFL when the Bengals drafted the receiver, Ja’Marr Chase, who was their quarterback’s number one target that won a national championship together. Those two guys are doing incredible together. We can go through countless episodes of that or there’s a lot of continuity, so bringing in people with a work history is a smart move.

I’m going to go with Chewie with my last pick. Chewie plays a role. He’s an absolute grinder. He shows up and is always there for you unlike C-3PO because C-3PO is going to take a lot of the oxygen out of the air. You are not going to get a lot of talking out of Chewie. You’re not going to get a lot of talking back and leaping off. He’s there to work. He loyally shows up and is incredibly handy. He’s a very diverse character, an expert pilot, and an expert mechanic. He’s another guy that could help you build things.

He is about as tough of a character you’ll find in the Star Wars world. He can shoot, fight and arm wrestle. It might be a little bit one-dimensional at times in your conversations with him. It would take you a while to understand what the hell he had to say to you. I’m not sure there’s a lot of upward mobility with Chewie, but I already have Princess Leia who is going to be gunning for my job at some point. I don’t need two of those and I don’t think Chewie wants my job. He’s good with being a number two and that’s all Chewie ever wants to be. He doesn’t want to be the CEO, so I won’t have to worry and watch my back. I don’t think Chewie will be a flight risk because he’s a loyal guy.

I understand that choice. It’s hard to argue with the choice. There’s no rebuttal out of me. You’ve got Chewie, C-3PO and Yoda together. I don’t know if you’re going to have a lot of office parties or a lot of communication. Basically, you got C-3PO, R2-D2, Yoda and Chewie. The only person who speaks is Princess Leia and you.

This is not a team that I built on happy hours. I’m trying to build a billion-dollar unicorn company. I hired them based on talents, not on who I want to drink beers with on the weekends.

This is an incredible story about Chewbacca that must be told. Nicole is a fan favorite and has been referenced a bunch of times. She is my friend since middle school. She went to work out of college for Arthur Andersen that used to be one of the big six accounting firms, and the whole Enron thing has broken. This is in the era before text messages. It’s probably a text message nowadays but back then, there was office voicemail. The ship was going down and Arthur Andersen was about to go from a Fortune 100 company to bankrupt and decimated. Someone got control of the office-wide place fails and left a voicemail for everyone in the voice of Chewbacca.

This is going to be a risky pick, but we’re late in the draft process. This is my logic. I got Luke, Obi-Wan, Wedge and the Imperial Walkers. I’m strong with brute force. I’m strong with Wedge. I’ve got someone with incredible upward mobility and a growth arc, Luke. I’ve got the wise old sage, Obi-Wan. Sometimes, in the beginning, you need a mercenary. You need someone to come in and do the job.

Are they long-term? Are they great for culture? Probably not, but they’re effective, good at what they do, and help keep you in business. It can become a moral quandary if you can keep them out of trouble. I can tell you this from the beginning, our standards were not as high when we started. I am going to pick Boba Fett, who is also known as the bounty hunter.

I was going to go in a very different direction here with pick five, but I picked him for this reason. I feel like I’m strong. I got a good team and a good moral compass. I need someone who comes in and gets shit done. He will probably be a flight risk or a turnover. He’s out for himself. He’s selfish but again, in the beginning, you need people who can help get the job done and keep you going.

In any startup, you can't just hire people who are hard workers and grinders. You also need some people with brains. Click To Tweet

You go into it realizing, “I’m not hiring everybody to last forever.” One of the episodes that we did is about Amazon with Jeff Bezos. He talked about ruthlessly replacing people at the beginning with people who are more talented. This happens in businesses and careers. You find someone who can get the job done now, but they don’t necessarily have a 20 or 30-year window. Maybe it’s a three-year window where they keep you in business while you’re figuring some stuff out. It’s a little bit of a risky pick but that’s about that.

Boba Fett is the best at what he does. He’s probably going to charge top dollar in the universe for his services. I’m not going to be the best for culture but you’re right. When you’re starting a company, you need people that are very good at what they do, whether that be programming, legal or working with microwave sensors on a product. You need people that come in narrow, incredibly good at what they do, and it’s worth paying them a little bit of extra money early on, even though they probably aren’t going to broaden out and do much else.

From that perspective with Boba Fett, you’re getting one of the best in the world at what he does. He’s a bit of a child prodigy. I would say Boba Fett though has some serious diva tendencies. There’s a lot of risks there in hiring someone who thinks as highly of himself as Boba Fett does. He’s not going to be loyal to you, so you’re always going to be negotiating pay with Boba Fett, which is going to get old for you. He’s going to be back talking to you every three months and renegotiating his salary. He serves the dollar and that’s it. That’s a pretty risky pick honestly for a startup to go with a guy like Boba Fett, even though he’s good and he’s going to serve a role.

For sure it comes with risk. In a startup, you turn over people a lot. The thing to do is to bring in people to help keep you in business long enough to make it to your next iteration. From that perspective, it’s a risky but strategic pick because of the fact that I have other people who are going to have the moral high ground where he may not.

In summary, my team is made up of Princess Leia, Yoda, R2-D2, Chewbacca and C-3PO. You have Imperial Walker, Luke Skywalker, Obi-Wan, Boba Fett and Wedge. That’s your squad. Notable people who did not get drafted under either of our teams from the inaugural Star Wars draft. The most obvious one that did not get chosen is Han Solo, which many people think is the star of the original trilogy. Han Solo is pros, handsome, brave and witty. If we’re going off of Frank’s logic of fun for a happy hour, he’d probably be the most fun of anyone you can take to a happy hour. Can you think of anyone more fun than him?

Out of this crowd, maybe Lando Calrissian, but that’s it.

Han is very confident. That’s positive. Han Solo would obviously be a strong sales and marketing person. We didn’t choose him for a reason to put him on our team. What were your reasons?

I clearly took a flight risk or a selfish person involved with that, but I think Boba Fett is a little bit more calculated and strategic than Han Solo. If I’m going to take a risk on somebody, I’m going to take a risk on somebody who is incredibly good. I use the term mercenary. I hire a mercenary and not a train wreck who is making morally bad decisions over and over again.

That’s where we land with Han Solo. He’s arrogant like, “I love you.” “I know.” He’s an arrogant dude. Boba Fett is a mercenary but I don’t think he’s arrogant. He’s tactical and smart. I use this term a lot in my business. You can go with a dumpster fire or a yard sale. He’s all over the place and he’s very hard to scale. Sometimes, you have to have superhero management to keep him on track because of the fact that he was so wild and all over the place.

 

He’s overconfident. He has questionable judgment. I think judgment is pretty important when you’re starting a business, especially in the first few people that you bring in. I also feel like he’s incredibly selfish and a little too self-absorbed for starting a company. When you’re starting off, you can’t have a lot of divas because everyone is getting humbled all the time when you’re starting a business. I don’t see any loyalty. Han would leave you in a second. He’d be a lot like Boba Fett.

You could not have Boba Fett and Han Solo on the same team. You’re already going to be negotiating with Boba every 2 or 3 months on salary, which is going to wear you thin. You can’t have Han in your office all the time. He’s also going to be a distraction if you’ve got women on your team. I have Princess Leia, so I could not have Hans because she wouldn’t be able to focus. He’s so handsome. He’s definitely the guy who’s going to get voted most likely to be banging the receptionist. That’s Han Solo, which is an HR problem for sure. That would be too much work for a startup.

Let me go through some honorable mentions who didn’t get drafted. Admiral Ackbar to me didn’t add a lot of value. He just kept screaming, “It’s a trap.” It became an incredible meme but not much else.

It’d be weird to have him on your team because being ugly is one thing, but he’s so ugly that you almost would be distracted while you were talking to him. It’s hard to have people that work for you that are so ugly that is distracting. It’s almost an awkward office talk after that. People start talking about him. It’s too ugly for me. That was my decision. He’s talented enough but he’s too ugly.

Stormtroopers, we talked about them off the jump. They are not draftable. Those are 1099s. You bring them in when you need them. You need a little muscle but that’s it. One of the people who I was thinking about potentially drafting was Miwok, but I got my muscle from my Imperial Walker. Ewok is like an underling to a Chewie like a worker bee type. It’s more of a pawn than someone on the backline.

If you’re going to go with something that makes a bunch of weird noises at you all the time, get one that could kick some ass too.

Most notably beside the last one is the band, Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes. They were on the board. They went to the Combine and they tested strong. It had an incredible shuttle drone and L run. They are three-cone drill and their speed was off the charts, but they were not drafted. Who else did we not draft in?

The problem with Figrin D’an and the Modal Nodes is I questioned their ambition. They are talented as hell. They are a great band. Why are they playing in that low-ass dive bar? At some point, you got to have some courage and try to be a winner, get a little bit bigger, and move your way up.

There’s one omission that’s quite large that we haven’t talked about yet. Do you want to bring him up?

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Neither of us took Darth Vader. I thought you were going to take Darth Vader. When you went with Luke and took Obi-Wan, I thought you were going to think, “I could balance out Darth Vader. I could put Darth on this team and handle it.” I thought you were going to do that instead of Boba Fett.

I think Darth Vader just comes with too much baggage. He’s flying off the handle and choking people out. He’s very destructive. A mercenary is different from someone who is an altogether tyrant. That’s the reason why I didn’t pick him. I don’t care how strong your office culture is or talented, but he’s too much of a problem.

To me, where the fine line is drawn is someone like Boba Fett. They’re talented, you know they’re selfish and you know they’re going to leave for a bigger paycheck, but they’re good at what they do and they keep to themselves, where your office culture could be completely ruined with someone like a Darth Vader because it’s his MO.

The reason why I wouldn’t want Darth Vader is he is not coachable at all. He is very focused on his way of doing things. He can’t be motivated. He’s got a one-track mind of domination. You can’t motivate them with money, with encouragement and coaching. He would likely try to oust me by killing me at some point.

We would have turnover issues in the office. He’s a terrible manager. You can’t choke employees anymore. In the ‘90s, you could but things are different nowadays. You can’t choke people when they’re not listening to you or are performing as well as you want. It would be hard to create an open culture with Darth walking around and killing people.

A friend of mine got some feedback at one point in his career and it was something to the tune of, “We want people who look for win-win and you are always looking for a win-lose.” What it looks like with a Darth Vader is it’s a win-lose. He’s got a win and other people have to lose. I had him off my board, which means under no circumstances would I draft him. Han Solo and Darth Vader were both on my do not draft list.

Initially, I thought about Boba Fett being on that list but when I was coming down to it, I took him off because he serves a purpose and a specific one. He could do great things for a limited period of time, but I don’t think he’s going to overreach to a point where he’s going to bring you down. That could be the case for both Han Solo and for Darth Vader. I am a startup business. I’m twelve years into it but I have seen this person.

I have seen some of the dark history and a dark past, and they are a constant no. I have also seen the mercenary that’s jumped a bunch two years here and there, but they are top two in sales at every car dealership they’ve ever worked at. A person brings in revenue. Are they scalable? Most likely not, but they help you get to the next better person. They don’t kill you like a Han Solo or a Darth Vader could.

That’s fair. Even though Darth Vader would be good at collecting as much real estate as possible and good with acquisitions, but you’re right. He is very much an all-or-nothing thinker. Your win is my loss. That’s how he thinks of everything and there is no negotiating. In general, that inflexibility does not work for a startup. I’d also say for all of his blusters, he’s not very competent as a leader.

 

He’s not a leader. He’s a perfect example of someone who’s great at their job that gets promoted into a leadership role who doesn’t deserve a leadership role. He may have been great at his job. He ruled with fear and elevated up in old school culture, but it doesn’t work nowadays. He cannot work across the aisle. He is simply a dictator.

Everyone around him is scared to argue with him or give up any new ideas. All the ideas are Darth Vader’s and because of that, no one tells him when something is not about to work. He got the Death Star blown up twice with poor judgment.

One of the things that you always talk about is the emperor with no clothes. The emperor with no clothes is a great analogy here because nobody can give them any feedback at all because he’s not willing to listen.

I’m not sure if there’s a winner or loser. I think CBS is going to send us an email in the morning. I feel good about my squad, but I’m not going to lie to you. Your squad is pretty good. The Imperial Walker was a reach. You didn’t need to go as early as you did with the Imperial Walker. The same with Wedge, you took them pretty. You left some good names on the board for me. I probably could have got them in the 4th and 5th. I would say overall, your team is pretty good.

What I know for sure is Neil is going to win the draft and he’s going to be 2 and 12.

Don’t forget to give us a five-star review. If you’re new, like us, love us, forward us and share us. Frankie, it’s good seeing you.

It’s always a pleasure.

See you.

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• Apple Podcasts – Let Me Speak To A Manager
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