I haven't been a solopreneur for a while. A solopreneur is someone whose business is just them; The entire business operations, everything moves forward with you. I really felt as if, in the last two years, as I've been more of an entrepreneur, it wasn't until the end of this year that I became a CEO. When one enters the CEO space, it's almost sort of this arrival that announces a different level of analyzing and running your business. It becomes almost an ecosystem, where everyone has their role and their part and it all has to work seamlessly for the business to move forward. The role of a CEO is to make sure and oversee that large order of operations, to make sure everyone's job is being done the proper way to move the needle forward. There are three mindset shifts I really had to put in place for myself to go from Scout’s Agency being just me to a team of six today.
- Get comfortable with job delineation and allowing your team to do their jobs.It is very difficult for the entrepreneur to sit back and to not jump in when something might be a little bit off, or to not pick up the workload when something didn't go quite according to plan. This is difficult because, as the owner, our business is our lifeline. If there is something that is threatening that, we jump into high alert. That disempowers your employees to learn on the job, understand the scope of the job, and doesn't allow them to build their muscle to feel confident in the job. When you don't jump in and you allow the person who you hired to fulfill that role figure out the best way forward, under your guidance and suggestion, it allows them to get comfortable in their job, confident in their job, strong in their job position. This allows you to not focus on the things that you hired them for, but rather the things that are going to make the ship sail.
- Value your time. Rachel Rodgers, in her book, We Should All Be Millionaires, taught me this concept of really understanding, quantifying, and putting a dollar number to your time. Take what you pay yourself, divided by all the things, and figure out how much an hour that really boils down to. Using that to identify whether things are worth it or not for you to spend your time on is going to make sure that you are focused, specific, and purposeful with what you do. Get comfortable with outsourcing, too. When you become successful in your business, or when your business starts to take off and you advance from solopreneur to entrepreneur to the CEO position, your time becomes the business's most valuable asset. In many ways, you are the one that can most significantly move the needle forward.?
- Invest in upper management. The minute you want to transition from entrepreneur to more of a CEO role is when you hire upper management, when you bring someone in on a senior level that creates an organizational chart of who is reporting to who. In that, you gain a little bit more expertise in your business. It is so helpful to have someone close by, who you can trust with higher strategy business development, the quarterly goals, revenue projections, what you need to hit. When you start building and fleshing out a team, it allows you to dedicate time to the tasks that only you, as the CEO, can accomplish.?
- Make sure the tasks on your to-do list are things only you can do. Every single day I wake up, I ask myself: Are these tasks that only I, as the CEO, as the owner and founder of the business can do? If it's a task where it doesn't have to be me doing it, that means one of my team members does it. That way I know I am using my time the most efficiently. When tasks come on to your workload, you ask yourself, Am I the only one that can do this right now, in this business? And if it's yes, then you do it. If it's no, you outsource it.
To recap: The first is job delineation and allowing your team to do their jobs. The second is your time. The third is to invest in upper management. And the fourth is to make sure that all the tasks on your to-do list are things that only the CEO can do.?
I hope this gives you the courage to chase after your dreams and purpose.
