Trying To Stay CEO Is A Waste Of Your Time
If there's one mistake I've seen startup CEOs make over and over again, it's focusing on finding creative ways to stay CEO. So, the startup CEO focuses on different classes of stock, voting rights, and other crazy schemes.
Trying to stay CEO is waste of your time. In fact, not only is this the wrong thing to focus on, it's counterproductive too. I'll explain why in this short video. I hope you like it.
Read The Video Transcript Below:
I get a variation of this question a lot, which is how do I dominate my company as a CEO, even if I don't do a good job, so I won't get kicked. And the idea is, maybe I'll come up with some great stock scheme for them, you know, a shares versus B shares, and I'm going to have a hundred percent of the A shares. And therefore nobody's going to fire me.
Give it up.
If your goal is just to stay in power for the sake of staying in power, I can guarantee you you're going to fail. You're not going to attract people to work with you. You're certainly not going to attract investors. And let's say, you do?
Wel, you know, what's going to happen? The investors are going to fire you. If you don't do a good job, you're not going to win. So what's the answer?
Execute.
Execute your plan, execute your strategy. That's how you stay in power. That's how you stay in control. And that's how you become good at what you do.
Everything else is garbage. It's not going to work for you. So just give it up. It's a waste of your time. It's a waste of your energy. Trying to come up with these crazy schemes isn't going to work.
And if you want better proof than this. Look at Travis, the ex CEO of Uber. He had controlling shares and you know what happened because he wasn't doing a good job. The investors got tired of them and they throw him out. Because guess what? When you're beholden to investors, and you need their money, doesn't matter what your ownership is.
Here's what the investors did in Uber's case. They told Travis, the CEO, you know what? The condition of the next amount of funding, the company needs to stay alive is that you resign.
You will no longer be CEO. So Travis was faced with the choice. Either his company goes down and he gets nothing. And at this point he was a billionaire on paper, or he can take the deal and walk awa.
He took the deal and he walked away. So that's the lesson here. If Travis couldn't stay in power, you're not going to be able to stay in power.
So what's the answer? Say it with me again. It's execute. That's the answer. Stop with the rest of it. It's just silly. It's a waste of your time. It's a waste of your energy. Just focus on the execution. I'm brett@brettjfox.com. Have a great, great day.