More thoughts on what it takes to move from running a business to owning a company

Transitioning from running a business where you are typically involved in every decision, to owning a company where you are steering your company through scale up, is a pivotal time for every CEO. This article is aimed at those on this pathway and/or those who recognise that the next step is just out of reach and a little guidance could help.

Many of the ideas I’m going to share are known, what I’m aiming for is to give you a practical way to implement them at this next level. We’ll talk about ideas to help rethink how you allocate your time, shape teams, and keep pushing forward while the business is still running around you – I might add, not the same as you running around in the business!

Planning for and leading a fast-growing company is both thrilling and intense. Every decision feels pivotal in shaping the path forward, while the rapid pace can feel almost surreal at times. This momentum and pace is where strategy meets execution, and vision connects with the details that make it all work. Finding your way in the midst of this whirlwind is challenging, but it’s an important part of the journey. This is the moment to take a step back and evaluate what kind of leader you want to be as your company expands. How you approach your role will set the tone for the organisation and impact its future direction.

There’s always room to explore new ways of leading and fresh perspectives that help you adapt as things continue to accelerate. It’s not just about relying on familiar answers but staying open to approaches that drive true alignment and progress. This is the time to strengthen and sharpen your approach, make more meaningful decisions to support the health and growth of your organisation, and embrace the possibilities that come with it.

Leading a scale up company requires a fundamental shift in your role as Founder/CEO. As your company expands, the challenges multiply, and your decisions play a pivotal role in shaping its future. To effectively manage this growth, it’s essential to adapt your leadership style and prioritise strategic initiatives that support both immediate actions and long-term goals. Instead of getting bogged down in daily tasks, step back to see the bigger picture. This broader perspective enables you to make informed choices that align with your company’s vision, direction and purpose.

A really simple way to look at this concept is to ask yourself how many operational meetings you are involved in where you are discussing and making decisions on the day to day and month to month operations in the business, and how many company, director and board level meetings are you involved in where you are discussing strategy and vision at least 5 years ahead. For many just this simple step can be a big challenge without the help and support of those who have been there before you.

Let’s begin with something as simple as it is important – your diary. With every new project, team, and external stakeholder, demands on your time increase significantly, which we know. Regularly review your schedule to spot activities that don’t align with your highest priorities. If a task doesn’t make use of your unique strengths or isn’t ?essential to moving the company forward, it’s time to delegate. For example, routine meetings like first-round interviews or minor marketing and sales updates can be handled by other members of your team.Focus on areas where your input is irreplaceable, such as executive recruitment, building strategic partnerships, or setting the company vision. Make clear boundaries, and don’t hesitate to say no when necessary. If you can’t say no because you are the only one who can make these decisions, start planning today to distance yourself from this requirement.

Effective delegation is an essential tool for scaling your leadership impact. After all, delegation is more than just passing off tasks – it’s how you empower your team to operate independently and confidently. This means identifying capable managers and trusting them to lead their areas while keeping a watchful eye on the broader direction.

This can be a common pitfall. Holding on to responsibilities you used to handle, even when there’s someone else in place. It’s something I fell foul of many years ago in my property business – see Delegation as a Leadership Strategy . So make sure you stay intentional about where you’re involved, avoiding both the temptation to micromanage and the tendency to disengage completely. Balance is key. Managing your time and delegating effectively also means you can focus on your role as a leader who sets the tone for the company’s culture. As your organisation grows, maintaining open and empathetic communication becomes even more critical. It’s up to you to encourage transparency, give regular feedback, and create an environment where challenges and successes are shared openly. This approach helps keep the team aligned and motivated, even during periods of intense change. And remember, by demonstrating this philosophy, you are leading your future leaders into best practice for them and their teams.

By refining how you manage yourself and your team, you’ll be in a better position to drive high-impact decisions that lead to sustainable growth. Yet, as the company scales, your internal leadership isn’t the only thing that requires attention. Building and leading an effective board becomes equally important for handling complex challenges. That’s where we’ll focus next.

The secret to building and managing an effective board is to view its members as true strategic contributors, not just advisors. In fact, the selection and management process should be treated with the same importance as recruiting key executives. The aim is to form a high-performing team that steers your company's growth in the right direction. Board members have a direct hand in shaping decisions and the culture of the organisation, so it’s vital to bring in people who have both the right expertise and a deep commitment to your vision. It should come as no surprise that selecting venture capital or VC board members is a significant step. These individuals bring industry connections and insights that can greatly benefit the company. But a common mistake is prioritising the need for the value of an investment over the quality and experience a potential VC or partner brings. Choosing a partner who aligns with your mission and can offer meaningful guidance is often more valuable in the long run than a higher upfront investment. So it’s important to discuss potential partner replacements from the start, that way you know what to expect if a change happens down the line. Read more about sacrificing purpose and direction for short-term value here .

You can’t know everything. Not just operationally where others in your team may have more product, service or market knowledge and skill than you – that’s why you employ them. When it comes to leadership and transitioning to owning a company, unless you’ve done it before, you can’t know how to do it even if you may know notionally what to do. This is when you become courageous enough to seek and recruit the right board members, VC’s or partners, and guidance from a mentor – remember, its experience, perspectives and ideas you need at this point, not just clever coaching questions.

Independent board members are equally important. Their role is to balance the perspectives in the boardroom and advocate for the company’s best interests, even when investor priorities might differ. An independent member with hands-on experience in high-growth environments can bring a unique viewpoint and serve as a sounding board for the CEO, especially during periods of rapid change or uncertainty. This person becomes an anchor, helping to keep the company’s trajectory steady. As your business evolves, the needs of the board will change too.

Early on, you might need board members who can offer guidance on finding product-market fit or building your team. Later, as you enter new phases of growth, it might be more about managing mergers and acquisitions or preparing for an IPO. Reassessing the board’s composition regularly ensures you have the right people for each stage of growth. Building a strong board isn’t just about finding impressive CV’s – it’s about creating a group that shares your vision and can contribute actively to your company’s strategic direction.

As your company grows and your goals shift, remember to evaluate whether the current board still meets the company’s needs now and where the company will be in the next few years. By continually refining your board’s composition, you create a dynamic support system that can help guide your company through the complexities of scaling and beyond.

Building an effective board is just one part of the equation when growing a business at scale. Equally important is how the organisation itself is structured to support highly flexible and agile growth. A key aspect of this approach is recognising that your company’s structure will need to evolve as it scales. You will be making decisions based on available talent, current priorities, and short-term goals through a philosophy of succession planning in every role (including yours), so the organisation becomes fluid and teams are ready to shift and adapt frequently. Reorganisations, whether company-wide or within specific departments, will become a recurring theme. For early-stage companies, this might involve redefining roles at the executive level and implementing changes throughout the organisation. As the company stabilises, the focus shifts to refining structures within specific functions like sales or marketing, reflecting a move from product development to go-to-market strategies.

Such constant change can cause uncertainty among employees, so you must communicate openly about the reasons behind these shifts. It may seem counter-intuitive to move people around your organisation, but reorganisation further promotes innovation, it supports your employees on their own career pathway, and means that no one individual ‘owns’ their role for the good of the company. Remember that flexibility and the willingness to reorganise frequently are necessary when scaling on purpose.

There’s no single right way to structure a company during this growth stage. Instead, success comes from consistently reassessing, communicating changes clearly, and staying open to evolution as your organisation expands.

With a solid, constantly evolving internal structure and an effective board in place, the next focus is on scaling marketing and public relations to match the pace of growth. This involves more than simply expanding activities – you need to create alignment between your brand, vision, purpose, growth efforts, and communications strategy. As your company grows, marketing should evolve into a more sophisticated operation, with defined roles for growth marketing, product marketing, and brand marketing. Each plays a part in supporting the overall business, but they must work together seamlessly to drive growth and maintain a cohesive image.

Now I’m no marketing expert but I have been around long enough to discover that marketing must be the top priority for every business. without marketing, there’s no sales, without sales there’s no revenue, without revenue you can’t employ a team, and without a growing and evolving team, there’s no business. At this level of scale we’re now talking about defining and refining your marketing strategy into subsections each with its own tactics and plan, and that plan includes both internal and external marketing activities.

Here's a brief snapshot of what I’ve found you need to delegate to your marketing team through your marketing director – remember career pathway.

Growth marketing is the foundation for acquiring and converting new users. It leverages data and AI to optimise performance across channels like digital ads, content, and search engine optimisation using detailed A/B testing and ROI-driven strategies. Its approach sets a benchmark for how to scale user bases effectively, with careful attention to metrics and experimentation. Product marketing, on the other hand, is more focused on aligning what you offer with what your customers need. It shapes messaging and positioning to ensure that the product speaks directly to your audience’s pain points. This kind of marketing strengthens relationships with existing customers and helps maintain engagement, particularly when new features or updates roll out. Early-stage companies can benefit significantly from the feedback loop that product marketing creates, providing valuable insights to product teams.

A quick note of caution: this split marketing strategy is for companies operating or who want to operate at scale. It’s not for those with no ambition to grow beyond a single digit team – you need to focus on problem market fit – read more here.

Brand marketing plays a complementary role by shaping how your company is perceived. To build an emotional connection with customers, the focus should go beyond just logos or campaigns. Nike’s “Just Do It” campaign, for example, created a sense of shared values that transcended a single product line. Developing a strong brand early on can serve as a competitive edge, fostering loyalty and distinguishing your company in the market. Public relations pulls all these elements together by managing how your story is shared across platforms. A good PR strategy ensures that your narrative is consistent, whether through media outreach, story development, or crisis management. Some more thoughts here .

Successful scaling of both marketing and PR requires increasing individual efforts while focusing on strategic integration. This cohesion enables the company to grow sustainably while maintaining a unified presence across all channels. By ensuring that each piece of the marketing and communications puzzle fits together, you’ll create a solid foundation to support the company’s trajectory as it continues to evolve.

As your company matures, the focus begins to shift. It’s about fuelling growth while ensuring liquidity for founders, employees, and investors. If you’ve seen my Business Strategy Model, you’ll know that I use a car as an analogy for a company and the fuel you put in the tank as your cashflow. They say ‘cash is king’ in business, whilst I’m not sure that’s still true, what is true is that losing control of your cashflow can kill any organisations. We see an increasing number of companies filing for bankruptcy and in many cases, this is simple due to profitability and cashflow challenges.

Funding growth is becoming increasingly complex, now requiring a clear understanding of secondary markets, investor types, and equity considerations. The rise of different investor profiles has been a major development. Where venture capitalists and growth equity funds were once headline options, hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds, even grants and large family legacies have entered the scene. Each comes with its own approach and navigating through this growth becomes the mandate of your role as CEO as you own your company not just run your business.

Today we’ve learned that leading a scaling company means stepping into a new kind of CEO role – one that’s less about daily operations and more about shaping the big picture, empowering the right people, and staying agile as your organisation scales. To succeed, a CEO must set clear priorities, build a board that actively drives the company’s mission, and build internal structures that can keep up with the pace of growth. Strong marketing, thoughtful partnerships, and smart financing decisions are essential for sustained momentum. By refining how you lead and stay flexible, you’ll create a solid foundation that supports the company’s evolving needs and long-term success.

Drop me a line here to talk about the future of your business: https://calendly.com/markjarvis/grow-scale

#scaleup #smallbusinesshelp #leadership #businessgrowth