Cameron Herold breaks down five things CEOs should focus on: communicating a vivid vision, building the right team, managing cash flow, maintaining key relationships, and dedicating time to strategy and coaching. He draws on his experience at 1-800-GOT-JUNK.
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Look, if you're the CEO of a company, you've got five things that you have to focus on and just five things. Number one, follow me. This means show people what the vivid vision is for your company. Show them the direction you're taking the organization in. Craft that four or five page vivid vision that describes what your company looks like, acts like and feels like three years in the future so that everyone is completely aligned with the direction that you're going in. Follow me also includes your core values, your company's core purpose, and your bhag, that big, hairy, audacious goal. I remember back when we were scaling 1-800-got- junk, Brian's BHAG was to create a globally admired brand. The reason that I even joined Brian at 1-800-got junk in the early days was he showed me his two page vivid vision, what he called his painted picture. And I was so inspired by where he wanted to take the organization and I knew how to get it there, that I instantly joined him. Number two is the team. Make sure, as Jim Collins says, you get the right people on the bus and in the right seats. Your job as the CEO is to always ensure that you have the right people on the leadership team, the right people on your management team, that you have a virtual bench in place for each of the core roles, that you even know what the org chart looks like one year out and two years out. So you always know about the talent acquisition that you and the leadership team need to be working on to bring the right people into your company. Yes, I have a group coaching program for CEOs. And the beauty of my group coaching calls is you actually get to ask me questions on every call. You're not just listening to other CEOs. Drop me an email cameronameronherald.com for more information. Number three is cash. Cash is your oxygen. When you're scaling a company, think about cash like a scuba diver would think about oxygen in their tank. You're constantly measuring the amount of oxygen going out of your tank. You and your company are measuring the amount of cash going out of your business and the amount of cash coming into your business and always managing it. That way. As your company scales, you need to have proper cash flow and budgeting systems in place and you cannot build the business the way that you did in the early days. You can't scale into a mid sized or a larger company using very entrepreneurial systems around cash flow. And trust me, we almost bankrupted 1-800-got junk by not having that system in place. Number four is having the key relationships that can either make or break your company. And by those key relationships, those are things like the right partners, the right suppliers, the right investors, the right bankers, the right lawyers, the right mentors, having those right relationships that will actually scale the organization or that can put your actual organization at risk. And your job as the CEO and is to always have that lay of the land, which really ties into the fifth core thing that you're supposed to be focused on, which is around networking, coaching, thinking and strategy. Right. Your job is to be strategic. There's no such thing as strategic planning. There's strategy and there's thinking. And one of the core roles of the CEO is to be in that strategic think. So that strategic seat is always around networking, being coached, being involved in group coaching programs, attending mastermind communities, really considering the organization one year to three years out and coming back and showing the leadership team and your COO what the lay of the land looks like in the future. But those are the five big things that every entrepreneur or every CEO needs to be focused on.
