After 20 years running businesses and losing nearly everything twice, a CEO shares five lessons: stop rescuing your team, resist launching new projects when bored, fire bad clients faster, have hard conversations six months earlier, and remember your kids want your time, not your money.
I've run businesses long enough to have owned an office fax machine, and in that 20+ years, I've almost lost everything not once but twice. And I picked up some good lessons along the way. So if a time machine were to take me back to the first day as CEO, here are 5 things that I'd do differently. So number 1, I'd stop swooping in to save things, to save the day. Every rescue is just teaching your team to wait for you next time. Number 2, I'd resist the urge to start something new every time something got old or it got hard or got boring. Complex things break. It's the simple things that scale. Number 3, I would fire problem clients and I would fire stupid business ideas faster. They always cost more than they pay. Number 4, I would have the hard conversations 6 months sooner. They never got easier. They never got better with time. The damage only ever got worse. And 5, I'd remember that my kids don't want my money. They want my calendar.
