Founder's Framework

Ninety.io

Tune in to hear Ninety founder, Mark Abbott, talk with other company leaders and entrepreneurs about key business-building frameworks and concepts. You'll learn strategies for overcoming obstacles, making informed decisions, and reaching your ambitious goals.

  1. 13. Juli

    Family Business, Built to Last — feat. Sara Stern

    Most people meet a family business with a raised eyebrow, assuming nepotism, dysfunction, and the kind of dinner-table drama that makes for good television. Mark Abbott sits down with family business expert Sara Stern to make the opposite case: family businesses are among the most enduring and value-creating institutions on the planet, and the very thing critics mock is often the reason they last. Sara walks through the three-circle model of family, business, and ownership, the underrated role of the "chief emotional officer" who protects a family's traditions, and why holding relatives to the same standard is an act of love rather than favoritism. Mark connects it to his own work on rituals, artifacts, and the long game, including a simple framework for the four kinds of conversations every leader has and why mixing them up is where things break down. It adds up to a wide-ranging talk about culture, leadership, and playing a hundred-year game in a world obsessed with the next quarter. Key topics: Why family businesses endure, and why the stigma gets it backwards The three-circle model and the "chief emotional officer" Rituals, traditions, and artifacts as the real fabric of culture Holding family members to the same standard as everyone else The four types of conversations: coaching, managing, training, and social Playing the long game: 100-year thinking and legacy About Sara Stern: Sara Stern is a family business expert and EOS Implementer who has built her career helping family enterprises thrive. Before becoming an implementer she spent roughly a decade with a family business institute, and she is known in the EOS community as the person who champions family businesses rather than groaning about them. Find her at sarahbstern.com and on LinkedIn. Mentioned in this episode: The Three Circle Model of the Family Business System (Tagiuri & Davis, Harvard, 1978): johndavis.com Elliott Jaques, time span of discretion, from "Requisite Organization": Amazon The Drama Triangle (victim, persecutor, rescuer) and The Empowerment Dynamic (creator, challenger, coach), from "The Power of TED*" by David Emerald: Amazon Radio Flyer (a multi-generational family business example) LVMH and Warren Buffett (durable, enduring-asset examples) Connect: Follow Mark on LinkedIn Follow Sara on LinkedIn Sara's website: sarahbstern.com Subscribe for more founder-first conversations every other week. → Subscribe to Mark’s Founder’s Framework Newsletter → Subscribe to Ninety’s EOS Newsletter   → Try Ninety free for 30 days!

  2. 26. Juni

    Building Alongside a Founder — feat. Michelle Rose

    When Mark Abbott posted a Craigslist ad for a part-time assistant back in 2015, he had no idea he was hiring one of the people who would help define the soul of Ninety. In this special episode, Mark sits down with Michelle Rose to retrace more than a decade of building the company from a one-person coaching practice and a rotating cast of assistants into a platform that helped thousands of organizations survive and grow through COVID. They talk candidly about the messy early years of fractional leadership and outsourced engineering, the farm outside Atlanta where every quarterly planning session ended around a six-hundred-pound cast-iron fire pit, and the hard-won lesson that culture is built by the people who care enough to solve the problem behind the problem. At the center of it all is a simple idea Mark keeps coming back to: your job is never just to do your job, it is to help the team win. Key topics: The Craigslist hire and the earliest, scrappiest days of building Ninety (90) Why fractional leadership and a "different company every six months" are so hard to scale Building a culture of service that was never written into the core values "Your job is to help the team win": the mindset that separates who thrives from who struggles COVID as the turning point that made both the platform and the relationships matter more than ever Mission versus job, and the real cost of a founder stepping out of every interview About Michelle Rose: Michelle Rose is one of Ninety's longest-tenured team members, joining Mark Abbott as a part-time assistant more than a decade ago and growing alongside the company into a leader across its implementer and client relationships. She is known internally for a deep commitment to service, relationship-building, and a willingness to do whatever it takes to help the team win. Mentioned in this episode: Kolbe A Index (the assessment Mark references in the hiring process): https://www.kolbe.com Connect: Follow Mark on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/MarkAbbott Follow Michelle on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michelleerose Subscribe for more founder-first conversations every other week. → Subscribe to Mark’s Founder’s Framework Newsletter → Subscribe to Ninety’s EOS Newsletter   → Try Ninety free for 30 days!

  3. 12. Juni

    Building Ninety: 10 Years Through the Eyes of Our First FTE — feat. Christine Watts

    Ninety almost didn't get to build the software that now runs thousands of companies. Mark Abbott marks the company's 10-year anniversary with Christine Watts, Ninety's first full-time employee, tracing the journey from a $500-a-month marketing budget and two college-age engineers to a platform used by roughly 4,000 organizations. They get honest about the years when every feature and every blog post needed EOS Worldwide's approval, the "beautiful mess" of bringing technology into a world that resisted it, and the ultimatum that pushed Ninety to build its own Plan B. Christine explains how customer experience became the company's north star without anyone ever formally deciding it, why COVID turned into the unexpected tipping point behind nearly 200% growth, and what a decade of constant role changes taught her about ambiguity, humility, and herself. In this episode: The early years: product-market fit inside the EOS implementer community with almost no marketing Building product under EOS Worldwide's approval, and the tension that came with it COVID 2020 as the tipping point that finally proved the product Customer experience as a core value no one ever formally decided on The "Plan B" ultimatum and navigating the license fight without burning bridges What 10 years and constant role changes taught Christine about leadership and ambiguity About Christine Watts: Christine Watts is Ninety's first full-time employee, joining in January 2017. Over nearly a decade she has led marketing, client success, and product, served as chief of staff, and now serves as Ninety's Head of Professional Services. Connect with Christine on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/wattschristine/ Mentioned in this episode: "Traction" by Gino Wickman "The Discipline of Market Leaders" by Michael Treacy and Fred Wiersema Try Ninety free: https://www.ninety.io/ Subscribe for more founder-first conversations every other week. → Subscribe to Mark’s Founder’s Framework Newsletter → Subscribe to Ninety’s EOS Newsletter   → Try Ninety free for 30 days!

  4. 29. Mai

    Why Leadership Is Never Aligned — feat. David Meyer

    Every leadership team thinks they're aligned. David Meyer, founder of Spoke Marketing, has run alignment exercises with over a hundred companies across 17 years, and not once have two leaders written the same answer when asked their company's single most important message. That discovery led David to develop what he calls "thresholds of change": the inflection points where a company's old story stops matching reality, whether driven by new technology, shifting buyer behavior, leadership transitions, or market disruption. In this conversation, Mark and David unpack why alignment breaks down, why emotion (not logic) is the true driver of change, and how founders can use a simple "now, next, later, never" framework to keep their teams pointed in the same direction during turbulent times. Key topics: Why 100% of leadership teams fail the alignment testThresholds of change: recognizing when your brand story no longer fitsThe "now, next, later, never" framework for prioritizationWhy founders get emotionally attached to what got them thereHow throwing more tactics at misalignment makes it worseAbout David Meyer: David Meyer is the founder of Spoke Marketing, a brand strategy and positioning agency he started nearly 18 years ago. With some team members who've worked together for over 30 years, Spoke helps companies figure out not what they want to say, but what their customers want to hear. Their mantra: "You haven't told your story until someone else can tell it." Website: spokemarketing.com LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/admeyer/ Subscribe for more founder-first conversations every other week. → Subscribe to Mark’s Founder’s Framework Newsletter → Subscribe to Ninety’s EOS Newsletter   → Try Ninety free for 30 days!

  5. 24. Apr.

    Why Your Weekly Meetings Don’t Work

    Mark and Cole unpack a simple but uncomfortable truth: if your weekly meetings aren’t working, your company probably isn’t either. This conversation breaks down why so many teams dread meetings, what’s actually going wrong beneath the surface, and how those patterns reflect deeper issues with alignment, leadership, and discipline. They walk through real scenarios inside leadership teams, from visionaries disrupting focus mid-quarter to teams avoiding the hard conversations that actually move the business forward. At the center of it all is one idea: the weekly meeting is not just a meeting. It’s a signal. And if you learn how to read it, it will tell you exactly what’s working and what’s not inside your company. You’ll Learn: Why most meetings feel like a waste of timeHow misalignment shows up in weekly meetingsThe role of the visionary in breaking or strengthening focusWhy teams avoid the issues that matter mostHow great meetings create clarity, accountability, and momentumHow are your meetings? Take the Rate Our Meetings Quiz to find out Do you like this content? Get our latest book, Meetings Kinda Suck Resources → Subscribe to Mark’s Founder’s Framework Newsletter → Subscribe to Ninety’s EOS Newsletter → Try Ninety free:  https://www.ninety.io/?utm_source=you… Connect: → Follow Mark on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/MarkAbbott → Follow Cole on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/ColeAbbott Subscribe for more founder-first conversations every other week. → Subscribe to Mark’s Founder’s Framework Newsletter → Subscribe to Ninety’s EOS Newsletter   → Try Ninety free for 30 days!

  6. 20. März

    The Hidden Cost of Too Many Ideas

    Growth creates options, but it also creates complexity. In this Founder’s Framework episode, Mark Abbott and Cole Abbott unpack why so many companies get stuck doing more instead of doing what matters most. What starts as experimentation, ambition, or a flood of good ideas can quietly turn into friction, confusion, and wasted effort across the business. This conversation is about discipline. It’s about keeping the main thing the main thing, resisting the pull of novelty, and building organizations that value fewer, finer, better decisions over constant motion. You’ll hear: Why too many ideas create drag across teamsHow founders accidentally add complexity to the businessWhy “fewer and finer” is a better operating principleThe difference between projects and programs as companies growIf your company feels busy but not clear, this episode will help you rethink what’s actually moving the business forward. Subscribe for more founder-first conversations every other week. Resources → Subscribe to Mark’s Founder’s Framework Newsletter → Subscribe to Ninety’s EOS Newsletter   → Try Ninety free for 30 days! → Stages of Development Quiz Connect: → Follow Mark on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/MarkAbbott → Follow Cole on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/ColeAbbott Subscribe for more founder-first conversations every other week. → Subscribe to Mark’s Founder’s Framework Newsletter → Subscribe to Ninety’s EOS Newsletter   → Try Ninety free for 30 days!

  7. 6. März

    Should Founders Rebuild for AI? feat. Audra Stanton

    Mark Abbott sits down with Ninety’s head of product, Audra Stanton to discuss how founders should think about AI in their products and operations. As AI becomes part of nearly every business conversation, founders are facing real pressure from investors, customers, and competitors to incorporate it. The question is not whether AI matters. The question is how to approach it thoughtfully without losing focus on what actually makes a company strong. This episode explores the tension between innovation and discipline. It is a conversation about judgment, timing, change management, and keeping humans at the center of the company. They reference examples including Netflix and Blockbuster, Intercom’s decision to lean heavily into AI despite short term pain, and Amazon’s “Just Walk Out” technology as a reminder that innovation does not always equal product market fit. In this episode: How founders should think about AI in product versus operationsThe fear of being left behind and how to evaluate that riskWhy most companies using AI are not yet seeing meaningful ROIHow to navigate change without losing your core customerIf you are building a company meant to endure, this conversation will help you think more clearly about how and when to evolve. Resources → Subscribe to Mark’s Founder’s Framework Newsletter: https://bit.ly/3JiAaXT → Subscribe to Ninety’s EOS Newsletter: https://www.ninety.io/impact-moments → Try Ninety free:  https://www.ninety.io/?utm_source=you… Connect: → Follow Mark on LinkedIn: https://bit.ly/MarkAbbott → Follow Audra on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/audra-stanton/ Subscribe for more founder-first conversations every other week. → Subscribe to Mark’s Founder’s Framework Newsletter → Subscribe to Ninety’s EOS Newsletter   → Try Ninety free for 30 days!

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Tune in to hear Ninety founder, Mark Abbott, talk with other company leaders and entrepreneurs about key business-building frameworks and concepts. You'll learn strategies for overcoming obstacles, making informed decisions, and reaching your ambitious goals.

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