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As the founder of a startup, everything starts with you. Unfortunately, most entrepreneurs have no idea what it
means to be a great leader.
I was the founder and chief executive of my own company in 2002 at the age of 22. I was accountable for everything
at my company. I certainly felt like a CEO, but after eight years, I realized I was not, and I was lost. I was young. I
didn't have any business mentors. I was on a soul search that eventually would lead me to understand my true role.
What happened was I joined a peer group of fellow business leaders in my local community. For the first time, I was
surrounded by CEOs who had been in the position for a much longer period of time, and who were much more
successful than me. For the sake of reference, this group of CEOs who I learned so much from (and whose names I
must keep private), are the heads of companies with annual revenues ranging from $5 to $500 million.
It was at this point that I finally began to see living examples of real leadership in play. And this changed my
perspective about who I thought I was and who I was striving to be.
My first and most important task was to correctly define what my responsibilities were as founder and chief
executive. With the help of my peers, here are the eight critical responsibilities we came up with:
1. Link the outside to the inside
Number one on my job description was inspired by an article in Harvard Business Review by Procter & Gamble's
CEO and Chairman, A. G. Lafley, titled "What Only the CEO Can Do." Here is how I have interpreted it and made it
work for me:
You are the link between everything outside and inside your company.
I think of it as being an intergalactic traveler. I get to travel from Earth to other planets, and vice versa. I am the link
between the inside Earth and the outside Planet Sparky (named after my alien-looking French bulldog).
At your company, you are the intergalactic traveler. Your company is the inside and the marketplace is the outside.
It's your job as CEO to see opportunities others do not. Most of your organization (with the exception of sales
people) tends to focus internally, and it's difficult for them to shift gears to focus externally. Therefore, you are to fill
that void. This is not to say that you should not engage and intently listen to your internal employees. This simply
means you ultimately are the one who must make the decisions.
Define the meaningful outside. It's all about looking at the outside factors affecting your company and defining
what is important and what is not. Everyone on the inside depends on you to define the outside. Take Ray Kroc,
McDonald's founder, as an example. People have always eaten out, but it was Kroc who defined the outside in a
way no one before him ever did. His meaningful outside is, of course, now known as fast food in America and
globally. If you look at your company and all of the outside influences affecting it, what matters the most? What
doesn't matter?
Decide what business you're in (and not in). There are an unlimited number of businesses you can be in. How
about selling language learning programs to dogs? How about selling sweaters and fleeces in Florida? How about
selling data mining software to governments? How about buying a global pharmaceutical company Sterling Drug
when you are Eastman Kodak? What?!? You get the point. Markets are ultimately your decision.
Consider KISSmetrics as an example. At one point, Neil Patel and Hiten Shah (the co-founders) decided that
internet marketing was the business they wanted to be in. They're talented people, so they could have started any
other company, but their experiences, skills and contacts were in internet marketing. When deciding your business,
consider all of the above. Making the wrong decision is usually terminal.
Balance present and future. As founder and CEO, you have to make sure there's a tomorrow, but you also have
to make sure there is a today. You need to constantly balance the needs of the company today with what the needs
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of the company may be tomorrow. For many companies, this comes in deciding on budget investments.
Going back to the failure of Kodak (there are many, but we'll focus on one), looking back now, everyone and their
mom knew that digital would crush the film business, especially Kodak. They invented digital. But, it was a strategic
failure to not invest in the present that ultimately led to no future.
This lesson goes the other way as well. Prematurely investing in technologies when you cannot afford to, or that
markets aren't ready for, will lead to early demise as well. You have to carefully balance today's present and
tomorrow's future.
2. Foundation: Purpose, vision and mission
I learned this from a presentation by Vicky Schneider on attaining exceptional people performance. Your foundation
is what keeps your company up. Without it, you would sink and fall. Everything is built upon your Foundation, which
I've tweaked slightly to be the following:
Purpose: This is why your company exists in the first place. It's timeless. It's fundamental even. This is the reason
anyone should even care about your company.
Vision: This is what you're trying to make happen. In other words, when your company succeeds at what its
purpose is, what does that look like?
Mission: This is how you accomplish your vision. It's not the entire plan; it's the super broad strokes of your plan.
This explains how you do what you do each day.
Different companies use purpose, vision and mission statements interchangeably, but setting that aside, here are a
few of my favorites:
You might want to check out Simon Sinek's TED talk to help you dig a little deeper on this topic:
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I've seen so many Founders build a team, get to work, and then forget to do what was one of the most important
things they originally did build the team and develop the team. Again, stunted growth will be a result.
As the director of your own movie, don't forget the lessons that Hollywood knows so very well, that everything starts
with the team. Where would Danny Ocean be without Ocean's Eleven? Where would Neo be without Morpheus and
the Nebuchadnezzar? Get that team together and never stop building.
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determines what gets done, and that decides the fate of your company.
It's important to note that this list evolves every year for me. So, every year always take into account where your
company is, what your resources are, where you're going, what your objectives are, and who you are at that
moment in life.
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