What Are 3 Things You Can Do To Be A Better CEO?
I've got a ton of tips I could give you to be a better startup CEO, but there are three things that will help more than all the rest.
I'll explain why these three things are so important in this short video.
Read The Video Transcript Below:
Okay. So what are three things you can do to prepare to be a better CEO? What are those three things? Let me give them to you in order.
Number one, run sales. If you're already a CEO and you're starting your company and it's early stage, you've got to be the one running sales. If you're thinking about being a CEO, getting sales experience is paramount. Why? Because, guess what's going to happen when you start your company? You're going to be the salesperson, whether you like it or not.
That's your penance in life. You've got to run sales, so get experienced, do it, learn it. And look, even if you've never run sales before, I can tell you from experience, having worked with a lot of engineers who transition over and become CEOs, even if you've never done it before, you're going to surprise yourself and you'll be really good at it over time. Just keep at it.
Second thing. Number two is learn marketing. It's not all about the product. If you don't know marketing, it's going to be very difficult to get leads. And if you have no leads, you can't sell. So understand marketing, learn marketing, get better at it. That's going to be a key to your company's success. So do that now, marketing, if you combine the two, if marketing is the top of the channel, sales is the bottom of the channel. Now you've got the whole thing, learn it. This is going to be really important for you, especially early stage.
And number three, and this may seem a little self serving, but it was probably the smartest thing I ever did when I was a CEO is get a coach, get a mentor, get somebody to help you. Somebody who's not an investor in the company to help you advise you, who only has your best interests at heart.
It's not going to be one of your co-founders. I can tell you that from experience because there's just too much baggage that are between you and your co founders. You need somebody who is independent and is only interested in you. That's the key to making this work.
So if you do that and you find somebody to help you and advise you, that person is only going to care about your best interests, it'll work. Trust me on this one. So those three things, let's go over them again. Number one, sales run sales. If you've never done it before, it's great experience. It's how you're going to get better. Don't worry about it. Number two, marketing. Do the marketing. And number three, get a coach. Get a mentor. I'm brett@brettjfox.com. Have a great great day.