CEOs Only Need To Do This To Be Successful

So today we are going to talk about the role of a CEO. What is a CEO supposed to do? So, a couple things. We have a couple businesses and we've hired CEOs in the past and we actually have a new CEO that is— that's onboarding soon. So I thought it'd be good to revisit this for anybody that is trying to go into a CEO-type position. Could be president or GM. CEOs, you know, obviously, The highest, but there's a lot of similarities. If you're a CEO, a lot of people will think, oh, there's a lot of glitz and glamour. You're out there, you're closing deals, you are the— you're out there to be famous and, you know, you're traveling a lot, right? And that might be the case in the beginning. I think if you're starting out, I think what tends to happen as the company matures is that the CEO becomes a lot more operational, is focused on things such as the vision, culture, and things like that. So, You know, those to me in the early days of learning to become a CEO, I thought those things weren't that important. It's like, oh, you talk about values, you talk about mission, you talk about culture. And I read a lot of books about it and they kept talking about over and over and over. I'm like, God, they keep talking about these things. But I'm like, you know, they're big companies. It doesn't apply, you know, when you're starting out, but it actually does matter a lot. So what I've learned, what's kind of been ingrained into me is that if you are trying to become a CEO, there's, you have 3 main responsibilities. One, Is your job is to maintain the vision. Okay, that's the first part. So vision, you are the steward of the vision, right? So you are the one that is going to come up with, hey, here's what we're trying to do long term, and then we're going to steer the ship in that direction. So you are maintaining that vision because you are the leader of the company. And one thing I think is often true, or is true, is good companies are not democracies. They're more so dictatorships or more meritocracies. So people that have merit, the more merit you have, the more, you know, you speak up, you can make an impact. But at the, at the very top, if you're the leader, you are kind of dictating what's going to happen. And you know, that's why you look at a lot of great companies. I mean, the CEO is calling the shots at the top. Um, but you know, they've also created a, an amazing culture as well. So, uh, vision is super, super, super important. Um, you define what it is and you might change it from time to time, but you got to keep communicating it over and over and over until the, When you start to feel it's annoying, then you've probably started to communicate enough, but you gotta keep it going. So vision is the first one. Second one is recruiting. And to me, you know, my background's in marketing. I don't— like when you talk about— when you used to talk about recruiting to me, I'm like, oh, you know, I don't really want to do it. But you learn as you get more and more, you get more experience that recruiting is— and hiring great people, it's one of the highest leverage things you can do as a business because When you are— when you hire that person that could be a 5x, 10x, 20x type of engineer, you're going to go a lot further and you're going to be able to take a lot of things off your plate and you're going to be able to focus on the big picture things, which is the vision. That's the first thing, right? Vision. Recruiting is number 2. You always got to be on the lookout for great talent. Sure, you can have people that are helping you. You can have headhunters, you can have internal recruiters as well. You can have all that, but you as the leader, you're going to be the best recruiter at the company. So you got to constantly be thinking about that because the more you can bring on these X-factor people, these A-players, uh, the more you are going to, uh, your company's going to be able to move a lot faster and hit the goals that you want to hit and achieve the vision that you want to achieve. Right? So vision recruiting is number 2. Number 3, I used to think it was just cash in the bank, but it goes beyond that. I'm just going to call this financing. So, you know, making sure you have enough financing, which ties in with the cash in the bank, because if you drop to zero, it's probably game over for you. Financing could be, you know, raising money. It could be raising debt. It could be raising— you can be, you know, giving up equity in exchange for dollars. You can be doing a lot of different things as well. I mean, there's revenue-based financing. There's just all sorts of different ways to get financing. And you can get financing from customers. You can basically just do it that way too. But you have a lot of different ways to do this here. And so 3 things: vision, recruiting, and financing. Those are the 3 main things for the CEO. But even beyond that, you gotta constantly keep those things in mind. As a CEO, you as a leader, you being the steward of the vision, when you have your managers reporting to you, so let's say it's your executive team, this is what I noticed over the years. Like, I would always notice myself being that annoying parent. You know how when your parents, you're growing up, they're always like, make sure you do this, make sure you don't wear your shoes in the house, make sure you shower, make Make sure you do your homework. Make sure you do this. Make sure you do the dishes. They're just constantly nagging you all the time. Guess what? You are now that parent. Your job is to—you're constantly nudging people, right? People might know what to do, but sometimes you just gotta nudge them. You know, hey, just you know I know. You know, Eric, I know. But it's like, oh no no, you know, just nudging you a little bit. Just nudging you a little bit. I was just talking with the CEO of Zoom Info last week, and you know what he said? He said we're just kind of joking about this. He's like, yeah, you know what? I call it putting pebbles in people's shoes, and he actually got this from somebody else. So his name's Henry Henry Chuck, and job his job is like yeah, you know I'm just constantly looking at everyone, and oftentimes they need reminders, and there's these constant problems that are popping up, and you know you often need to remind people. So you know when you get a pebble stuck in your shoe, you're just like oh you know you just keep walking with it until you're finally just like oh I'm just gonna finally take it out. Your job is to constantly nudge and place these pebbles. Uh, into people's shoes as well if you're trying to become CEO. So again, I'm gonna remind you, vision, recruiting, and financing. Okay? But beyond that, you are the nudger. Hey, hey, what's going on? What's going on? Right? Hey, what about that thing over there? Hey, you're not trying to micromanage per se, but you're just constantly reminding. And when you feel— again, this is kind of similar with the vision— when you feel like you're starting to get a little annoying with it, that's probably when you're doing it enough, right? I find that when I do that, things move. When I do not do that, things move so slowly, right? And it's not just about trying to force people into doing whatever I want them to do at the moment. I find that when I just leave people alone and, you know, let them do their thing, generally, generally they're trustworthy, but you'll find that things will move slower and deadlines will not get hit. So being there, being that person that will nudge every now and then, you'll find that deadlines get hit a lot more. And you obviously want to balance it with, you know, maintaining, maintaining a great culture, maintaining great balance for people so people can come into work refreshed. So there's this whole big— There's a balancing act that you're constantly having to play with, you know, how hard do you push people versus maintaining that balance. And then, you know, the culture that you build ties in with the vision. And so you have all these other dynamics, but again, I'm just trying to keep this video simple, or this content simple. And I'm gonna tie it back in with vision, recruiting, and financing. 3 main things. Keep nudging people, keep people going, right? Nudge people about the vision, nudge people about, especially your direct reports, your executives. Nudge them about things, and that's how you're gonna keep things going. And that's how you become a really good CEO. The final thing I'll say—I might—I might have to make another video on this—is that the greatest CEOs in the world, the number one thing they all obsess over is culture. Okay? So you obsess over culture to make sure that the other three things that you're doing—that your main responsibilities—are getting taken care of. But the culture is the thing that keeps your company running. It is what defines your behavior. I used to think it's all about execution because me as a marketer is just like. It's all about marketing, it's all about sales, right? Oh no, and then the product people are like, oh, it's all about product, right? And you just have this war. But man, the culture is what glues everything together, right? So that's a little bonus there. So that is it for today. I hope you enjoyed this. Don't forget to subscribe and hit the bell button, all right? If you're coming from YouTube, don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe if you're coming in from the podcasting world. And I hope to see you in the next piece of content, whatever that piece of content is. Have a good rest of your day. Thank you.