Ryan Deiss, after two business failures in 20 years, shares five changes he'd make as CEO. Stop being the best employee. Design the company to run without you. Document the 10-20 critical processes, not hundreds of SOPs. Build a business model that doesn't need constant A-players. That's what top talent actually wants.
I've run a business long enough to have owned an office fax machine, and in that 20+ years, I've lost everything not once, but twice, and I've picked up some pretty good lessons along the way. So if a time machine dropped me back into my first day as CEO, here are 5 things I'd do differently. Number 1, I'd stop trying to be the best employee in my own company. The more valuable you are to your business, the less valuable your business is. Number 2, I'd build it like I was gonna sell it, even if I never planned to sell it, because a sellable business is just a business that can run without you. Number 3, I'd stop trying to hire integrators and COOs to quote unquote run the day. Instead, I'd build an operating system first, then I'd hire the operators to operate the operating system. Number 4, I'd document the 10 to 20 things that actually matter in my value creation process, not 500 SOPs that nobody reads, just the critical few. Number 5, instead of trying to only hire rock stars and A-players, I'd focus on building a company that doesn't require them because that's the kind of company, believe it or not, that rock stars and A-players actually want to come work for.
