- Today, we're going to look at how you run your business like a CEO. Are you a small business owner
that's struggling to scale and you're looking for an easy way out? Well, today is your unlucky day. No shortcuts here. Today, we're going to go against the grain because most people go with the grain, and most businesses fail, unfortunately. So let's do common sense, because most
people don't do common sense. And we're going to look
at the difference between a hobbyist, a freelancer, an entrepreneur, a small
business owner, and a CEO, and what it means to
be all of these things and why it makes sense for
you to run your business like a business, imagine that, and be the CEO of your own business and how that will help you really scale without losing your sanity. But before we get on with the video, hit the like, click that subscribe button please and smash. (whizzing) It feels so good to say that, Smash that notification bell, and let's get on with the video, hit it. (upbeat music) So, I come across a lot
of small business owners and I sit there and I asked
them, "How's business?" And they say, "Don't get me
started, it's overwhelming. "I'm burning out, I don't
have enough time in the day. "I don't have enough hours,
I don't have enough clients. "I don't have enough this,
I don't have enough that, "and I've got too much of this, "and I got too much of that." And any too much's of they've got, and any not enough of, they've also got. And then I say, "All
right, so what's your plan? "Where's your strategy?" And they say, "Don't have a plan. "I started my business on my passion. "You know, that's what you do, "and you have to grind and
you have to sort of hustle "and you know, like all the other sort of "amazing people out there tell me. "I have to hustle, and I have
to hope, and I have to pray, "and one of these days, "my business is going
to succeed and scale." And then I say, "Well, okay, so you know, "how big is your team?" And they say, "Don't have a
team, doing it all by myself. "Because, you know, I
don't have enough money." And then, I say, "Ha! "I was going to ask you, how much money... "You know, what are your finances like?" "Don't know, I... "You know, get my accountant to do that "at the end of the year, "and that's as much as I see
about my budgets or finances. "But what I'm doing is I'm
sort of putting in the time "and the effort, and I'm grafting, "and I'm putting all of these things, "and I'm just going to get there, "and I'm going to go there, "and that's what I'm going to do." And I look at them and I say, "Unfortunately, you're living
in business purgatory, yeah." Business purgatory. How are you possibly,
possibly going to scale, when you don't have the
time of day to do anything? You've got what 10, 15, 20,
100 clients doesn't matter, depends on the business. Let's say you've got
a hundred clients now, and your diary is absolutely full, how are you expecting to
scale that from 100 clients, to a thousand clients, and have as much time? It's just not sustainable,
it's not scalable. There's no way that you
can create 10 more of you or make 10 more times the amount of time that
you have in the day or in a week, or in a month. It's just impossible. So, something has to change and something has to give this particular way of doing things. You don't have a plan,
you don't have a team, you don't know what your finances are, don't know what are all these things, and if you haven't seen
this video up here, where I talk about the top reasons why
your business will fail, I go through a number of these things where people are just
taking things on their own. They're trying to do
everything theirselves. They don't have a strategy. They don't have a budget. They think that they're the only people that know what to do. They don't have systems, they don't... The list is up here. I go through about 10,
actually, 11 of them. There's a bonus one at the end, so make sure you watch until the very end. You need to understand
that running a business is not about grafting. That's... Grafting is freelance. A freelancer. A freelancer. A freelance answer is a person who uses their expertise and they trade their time for money. They say, "X number of
hours, X number of days, "X number of weeks, "by project, by contract
size, by whatever," and that's it. And once your time is
up throughout the week, or the year, or the month, that's it. You can't do any more, it's
not scalable beyond that. If you want to be a freelancer, fantastic, but don't call it a business. The reason you got into
business for in the first place is that you wanted to have
flexibility and freedom, and contribution and impact, so that you can have
freedom to do what you want, and time freedom, financial freedom. And then, yet unfortunately, you find yourself doing
the exact opposite. No time, no money, no
freedom, no flexibility, no business, no life. Little bit of tough love here. I'm sorry, but, I see
this time and time again, and that's why it breaks my heart, that most business owners
fail at running a business. And what we want to try and understand is, the next step beyond that. So, if you're a freelancer,
that's fantastic. The next step after that is the hobbyist, where they're actually running a business and trying to run a business
around their passion because they're enjoying it, but they have no financial plan, they have no strategy,
they've got no direction, and they're sitting there
not knowing how to sell it, and that person is running a hobby and it will always remain a hobby. The next step after that is, you've got your entrepreneur
and your small business owner. So, as a business owner, you are somebody who owns a
business and you run a business, and that's your day-to-day
work of running a business. Say, for example, you've got a bakery or you've got a web design agency, you've got something and you're running it day in, day out, for a long
extended period of time. That's what a business owner is. An entrepreneur is somebody who
finds an innovative solution to satisfy a pain point,
or a need, or a desire. And they sit there and
they match the two together and they say, "Oh, here's a business idea. "This is a need, this is
my solution to that need. "Let me build a business around it," and that's being entrepreneurial. That's what an entrepreneur does. And that's why you can have
serial entrepreneurs who go on from one, starting one business, to another business, to another business. The minute you settle into that
business as an entrepreneur, and you run it for the next
five, 10, 15, 20, 30 years, and that becomes your business, and it's no longer an innovative solution, then, you become a business owner, and there's nothing wrong with that. So, those two are perfectly acceptable, as long as you understand how to run a business as a business owner, or how to start and grow, and scale a business as an entrepreneur. So, then we've got the CEO, who comes in as either an
employee in these businesses, or you as the business
owner or the entrepreneur, run your business like a CEO, which is what I'm proposing here, when you're starting up a small company and you're trying to scale it,
and you're trying to grow it. So, what are the differences
between how CEOs run a business and how you're running
your business today? I touched a little bit upon
the sort of the no strategy, the no plan, the no... All of these kinds of things. So, now let's break it
down the other way around. The role of a CEO is very, very simply, define and lay down a
strategy and a vision and make sure that it happens. And then, we've got subcategories to that, but that's essentially what it is. We've got a strategy and a vision, and we define what it is, we put our direction where we're going, and we make sure that we get there. And a strategy is not a
bunch of goals where you say, "I want to make a million dollars "or a million pounds in three years." That's not a strategy, that's a goal. If you want to put down a strategy, you sit there and you navigate and map out a path to the overall vision that you've set, and you're navigating and
overcoming the obstacles, and you're putting down that plan to say, "This is how we're going to get there." So, once you've... Once we understand that the role of a CEO is to set the direction and the strategy and the vision for the company, and make sure that you get there, then, we've got different
subcategories under that. We need to then, as a
CEO of your business, you need to then understand
how to communicate this strategy and vision. You need to be able to
communicate it internally as you're building your team, which we'll talk about in a bit, and you also need to
communicate it externally, whether it's to clients or other people that have an impact or are interested in your business. Being able to communicate
that strategy and vision is also a crucial part of what a CEO does. Notice, I haven't sat here and said, "You need to be an expert in your field "and you need to sit there
and work inside your business, "and you need to be, "you know, this is your genius zone, "and this is your whatever." Genius zone is great. That's how you start coming
up as an entrepreneur with a solution. But when you start running the business, you need to understand, "All right, so how do I make this happen? "Now I've come up with my solution. "How do I grow this, so that it can get "to as many people as possible, "so that I can impact positively, "as many people as possible?" So as a CEO, your role is to understand
how to communicate that strategy and vision, both
internally and externally, and the next step for you
to do, is to build a team. You cannot deliver You cannot deliver on the strategy and the vision
of any business by yourself. It's just impossible, otherwise, you will carry
on being a freelancer. If you're going to scale
this as a business, you need to have several people because, simply the roles of each of these to be able to understand
how to run a team, how to run a business, needs different people
with different expertise and different specialties
that one person doesn't have. Whether it's understanding
finances and budgets, whether it's doing project management, whether it's being able to
do sales, marketing, HR, all of these come later on. And we're going to look at
understanding where the team is, what it is going to look like today and what it's going to look like tomorrow, and how do we deliver
a team that understands and works within the culture
that you also define, which is also another
part of what the CEO does. So, you've communicated
your strategy and vision. You're building a team to be able to deliver
that strategy and vision, and you're ensuring and
defining what the culture and the values of the
business are going to be, so that everyone inside
that team that are growing, are motivated enough and
aligned to understand how to deliver that strategy and vision. And once you've done that, what also you need to be doing
as a CEO of your business, is you need to ensure that
the strategy and the vision and the execution of the
plan that you're doing is happening and is aligned
to what you've defined. So, ensuring that, that execution is being delivered properly is also part of your role as a CEO. We've built a team, we've said what culture and values that the business is
going to operate around, and we've communicated to
them how this is going to work and where we're heading as a direction, and we're basically making sure that we put the right systems
and measurements in place to ensure that we are executing according to
that strategy and plan. And then, the last thing that
you need to be doing as a CEO, is making sure that you've
got enough cash in the bank to be able to make all of this happen. And that's a topic for another video, but ensuring that you've got
enough cash flow all the time is important as you're
building towards that vision. And that's what a CEO of a business does and sits there and says,
"Here is my strategy. "Here is my team. "Here is how I'm going to communicate it. "Here are the cultures and values. "Here is how it's going to be executed. "Here, it's how I'm going to
ensure that it gets executed, "and here, is how I'm going to make sure "that I've always got
enough cash in the bank "to make all of this happen, "so that we can get there." And that's the role of a CEO
as part of your business. And what we're going to be
talking about in a future video is breaking all of these
down in terms of leadership, in terms of psychology, in terms of product, in terms of marketing, in terms of sale, in terms of operations and how you really run
your business like a CEO. So, there's a whole
bunch of other brackets that we're going to talk
about in future videos. So, please make sure that
you like and subscribe. But that's the overall role, if you will, of what a CEO or business owner, you should be aiming to work towards, so that you can enable yourself
to have that breathing space and say to yourself, "Right, okay, "I can grow this company now. "I can actually... "I've got the capacity and the resources "to grow this company, "and I've got these people
to do these things for me, "so that we can get to
where we want to get to." And that's the difference
between a CEO, an entrepreneur, a small business owner,
a freelancer, a hobbyist, and I hope that that makes sense, and in future videos, we're going to break down, running your business like
a CEO in a much more detail. So, please like, please subscribe and I'll see you next time, thank you. (bee) Welcome to CEO Entrepreneur. You know, we want it to call it CEO Entrepreneurs, small business owner, hobbyist, freelancer, purgatory person, business. But the whole domain
thing just didn't work. You know, https//ceoentrepreneur (speaking faintly) smallbusinessownerfreelancerhobbyistinpurgatory.com. Just didn't work. So, you know, we settled
with CEO Entrepreneur. But hey, whichever one of those you are, we're just happy you're here.
