Short spoken reflection by entrepreneur Suneera Madhani arguing that there is no formal "CEO school" or requirement for an MBA to succeed. She emphasizes that daily experience, showing up, building confidence, and unlearning imposter syndrome—particularly for women entrepreneurs—are the real work required to lead and grow as a CEO.
Chapters
You don't need to go to CEO school. That's like the biggest myth and that's the thing that I learned the most. I was always self doubting myself that I needed to be something, I needed to get an mba. I should do this, should do that. I was shitting all over myself and I realized that there actually wasn't ACO school. CEO school is like the experience that we have and every day I show up for a job that was bigger than the one I had yesterday and I just had to put my big girl pants on and show up for that day and tackle it on and then that's what I did every single day. I'm sure it's the same for me, male entrepreneurs as well. So I don't want to discount that. But my experiences as a woman and also now dealing with, you know, I've seen hundreds and thousands of female entrepreneurs now through the community of co school and the narrative plays out exactly the same and we as women feel it more than ever and we're actually the ones that are stopping ourselves from actually succeeding. It's us and it's actually not co school and it's not the MBA and it's not this or it's not that. It's actually us just showing up and having the confidence to bet on ourselves. That imposter syndrome, sometimes it doesn't just go away. There isn't like a magic pill I take in the morning and it's gone. It's work and it's unlearning and constantly working on myself to make sure that I'm showing up, trusting myself and in my confidence. And that takes effort, like that takes work to actually do.
