Tips on moving to The Big Job… and how to stay there!
Any successful entrepreneur will tell you that starting up a company and ultimately getting it steady on its feet is one thing, maintaining that company as a profitable commercial enterprise and sustaining growth in a competitive marketplace is another thing entirely.
As the entrepreneur of a company, you are the central authority figure in it for a time, but ultimately, there does come a point when a company’s founder steps away from the CEO role, sometimes voluntarily and sometimes not. Circumstances may vary, but statistical data shows that 4 out of 5 entrepreneurs will ultimately step aside from the CEO role in the company they founded.
The question is, why such a high number?
One of the main reasons is expansion; starting a business from the ground up, you see it grow and expand, add employees and resources. At some point, the business may have successfully grown to the point that it may become impractical for you to oversee the day-to-day running of that company in addition to your other responsibilities, meaning you have to step away from the CEO role and delegate it to someone else that you trust.
Another reason could be if your company goes public on the stock exchange, in which case, an IPO likely necessitates a board of directors to oversee management of the company rather than solely yourself. This could lead to a joint decision being taken by that board for you to step aside as CEO and be replaced.
Or an entrepreneur could voluntarily step aside from the CEO role completely of their own volition.
Either way, whatever the reason and circumstances, if you’re looking to ascend to entrepreneur-CEO status – and what’s more, actually stay in that position – we’ve compiled a few tips to help you in that endeavor.
1. Know Thyself
It may surprise some people but being an entrepreneur and being a CEO can be two entirely different tasks with quite disparate responsibilities and expectations. The former tends to be the visionary, the idealist whose grand plan has founded and built the company from scratch. The CEO, on the other hand, is more about sustainability, maintaining the daily operations of that company, problem-solving whatever comes your way, and ensuring everything is running smoothly.
It’s important to know and to recognize as founder when it is for the future good and wellbeing of your company that you should – as also CEO – to let someone else deal with the daily minutiae while you grow the company in the macro sense. You can’t be everywhere and do everything by yourself and being an effective entrepreneur-CEO is knowing when to recognize that time and adapt to it accordingly.
2. Nurturing New Leadership
As entrepreneur-CEO, you obviously have an immense amount of responsibilities and even though you may decide to delegate some of those responsibilities to help streamline and effectivize the company’s operations, nonetheless you should also be helping to train, nurture, and equip future leaders in your business.
Some people may resist this, seeing it as training up future rivals, but it’s actually counterproductive not to. By nurturing talent and expertise within your ranks, you as CEO are actually establishing a potential bright future for the company, engendering experience, loyalty, self-confidence, and ensuring you have the brightest and best on your team… exactly what a chief executive should do!
3. Balancing Stability and Profitability
As both founder and CEO, of course you want your business to be as successful and as profitable as possible, but there is a balance to be maintained there, and the better you do that, the more secure your position will be.
By concentrating on both profitability and long-term stability, you not only maintain your authority within that business as both investors and board directors see what a continuing asset you are. Additionally, you are also future-proofing your company in the event you step aside, leave, or retire, So not only are you helping to grow the business in the short to medium term, you are also ensuring your legacy as founder of a lasting and durable commercial enterprise in the long term.
