A CEO built a $100M revenue company in eight to nine years and stepped back from day-to-day operations to focus on strategy. Now she feels like she's doing something wrong because peers and the startup world keep saying CEOs should stay in the weeds. The speaker calls this an echo chamber creating false inadequacy.
Chapters
You, you may recognize this. The company is working. Everything is working. She'd been running the business. She found, co-founded the business, I think about 8, 9 years ago. A funny disorienting thing is starting to happen, which is that her anxiety is starting to go down because her need to constantly be in the weeds is disappearing. And this entire construct is leading to a completely new kind of anxiety. Which is I must be doing something wrong. Why? Because everyone tells her that a CEO's job should be wartime and in the weeds and doing this and doing, and she's like, "Jer, what am I doing wrong?" It's like, wait, wait, the company is growing. You're profitable, $100 million in revenue, 8 years in, and she's turning her attention to bigger strategic issues like, transactions that will double or triple the size of the business. And I said, it's working, but that should is in her mind, and she's comparing herself to her peers in the ecosystem, which is also known as the echo chamber.