When you first start out, building your own business from the ground up is an exhausting, wonderful, crazy experience. Everything about it feels new–even the problems have an air of adventure about them. You’ve gambled on this business working, and as the founder, it’s an amazing feeling when you realize that it’s happening.
But every successful founder reaches a point where things aren’t entirely as they used to be. That’s the price of success. Change certainly isn’t bad, but for many founders, the transition to the role of a CEO can be a difficult one. Here are some tips for making the necessary changes that lead to growth.
Create Real Senior Management
As your business begins to grow, you’ll find that managing it becomes much more complex. You can either keep things at a simple level that you can handle, while stalling growth, or you can embrace the complexity and change the way you manage.
That probably means creating a real senior management team that you can rely on. Sales, administration, operations, and other functions need someone dedicated to overseeing them. In turn, that person will be able to report to you and act as your conduit to these areas. It’s time to step back from the day-to-day intricacies that you may have originally been involved in.
Letting Go
That requires you to let go of what feels like control over things. You really aren’t losing control, just realizing the limits of your own capabilities. Your job is no longer to make sure every little thing is going right. Your job now is to focus on higher order issues and chart a course for continued growth. You must trust the people that you’ve hired to do their jobs. If you can let go and step back, you’ll have a much easier time transitioning from founder to CEO.
Reassess Employees
This may be a painful part of growing as a business, but you need to take a clear look at employees who may have been with you from the start. As the company grows and evolves, you may find that individual employees’ strengths and weaknesses no longer align with your company’s needs.
Now is the time to devote energy to hiring the right people. It’s absolutely crucial that your next hires are a great fit. You may find that you’re looking for people with a more specific skillset, rather than a jack-of-all-trades who was valuable during the early days of the company.
Give Yourself A Break
You don’t have to suddenly disappear for days on end, but you should find some downtime and attend to your personal life. Starting a company can consume all of your time, and that’s not a particularly healthy approach to take for months or years on end. Reconnect with friends and family, work on a personal project, or simply turn off your phone for a few hours and read a book now that you have some time.
It’s not easy building a company from scratch. At Pivot, we know the pitfalls and paths to success better than anyone because we’ve already helped so many entrepreneurs and businesses get their products to the shelves. So give us a call today to learn more about how we can help your business grow and thrive.
