The pandemic proved just the push that many people needed to transition into entrepreneurship. In 2021 alone, Americans started around 5.4 million businesses. Sure, some of those new business owners are grizzled business veterans, but many of them are young entrepreneurs.
That means that there are also a lot of young CEOs out there who may suddenly find themselves in charge of older and even more experienced people. Situations like that can undermine your confidence.
If you’ve launched a business but find yourself questioning what you should do, keep reading for five key tips for young CEOs.
1. Keep Your Focus
Once you get your business up and running, there are a lot of opportunities for distraction. For example, marketing is always chasing some hot new social media site or some new approach. There is always some new kind of management software that promises to launch your business to stratospheric success.
These are the shiny new objects of business and, as often as not, will provide only limited value. While you shouldn’t outright ignore them, don’t let them dominate your thinking.
You will also find yourself faced with opportunities for business diversification. Diversification can provide benefits, but it’s also an opportunity for distraction away from your main business.
Again, you shouldn’t always ignore these opportunities, but your main focus should stay on your main product or service in the early days. Diversifying too early can split your focus and resources in too many directions. If that happens, you run the risk that all of your business interests will fail.
2. Delegate
Entrepreneurs must possess a deeply rooted can-do mentality. When you first launch your business, the odds are very good that not only you but everyone in your business will take a hand in almost every aspect of the business.
While you might hold the role of CEO, you may well find yourself slapping labels onto boxes to get an order out on time. The woman you hired for IT support may find herself fielding customer service calls. That all-hands-on-deck approach works in the early days because you don’t have another choice.
Over time, though, you’ll hire more people to fill gaps in your organization. Successful young CEOs recognize that that is the moment when they must start delegating. If you hire people to handle customer service, you must let them do their jobs.
When CEOs insist that they keep their hand in with lower-level decisions and processes, their time gets used up managing things that other people should manage for them. The CEO becomes the bottleneck on growth for the business.
You must delegate work to the appropriate level. As the CEO, your main job is steering the overall business, not micromanaging the shipping department.
3. Work on Your Resilience
Resilience is one of the most important young CEO secrets. Why? Every single CEO will face setbacks.
The media loves talking about business leaders who seem to succeed with everything they touch. It can paint a picture that some CEOs truly possess the Midas Touch.
Yet, even the most successful CEOs back ideas that don’t work out. It looked great on paper and tested well with focus groups but failed to generate enough interest once it went to market.
These kinds of setbacks can cripple a CEO’s confidence and hamper future decision-making. This is why you need resilience.
You need the mental and emotional fortitude to look at those failures, glean what lessons you can from them, and then move on. If prior failures keep you from making necessary decisions, your business will flounder and fail.
4. Leverage Tech
All too often, business owners shy away from tech because it’s an area where they lack expertise. It’s the kind of choice that makes sense at the moment. If you don’t understand how technology works or the risks that it entails, how can you make good choices about it?
The reality is that smart CEOs leverage technology to their advantage. It’s not a necessity that you fully understand how the technology works. It’s a necessity that you understand what technology brings to the table.
For example, most CEOs probably can’t give you more than a surface explanation about the ins and outs of mobile app development. Yet, companies across the globe use them as a tool to encourage a deeper connection between the brand or business and its customers.
Most CEOs probably can’t write any HTML, CSS, or JavaScript, but that doesn’t stop them from running websites. Managing the risks of those technologies isn’t specifically on the CEO.
It’s the CEO’s job to weigh the value of the technology and ensure that the business hires people who can manage that risk for them.
5. Track the Numbers
Wise business leaders hire finance people to do things like bookkeeping and accounting for them. It’s more efficient, and you typically get better results than trying to do it yourself.
While it’s the job of your finance team to do the daily work, a CEO must keep a close eye on the numbers. It’s far too easy for you to miss early warning signs if you don’t monitor those numbers.
For example, if you see a sudden dip in revenue from one month to the next, that can mean that there’s a problem with the product, the marketing, or even your customer service. Staying on top of the numbers positions you to track down the cause of the problem and fix it.
Succeeding as Young CEOs
Succeeding as young CEOs is a lot of work, but it’s not an unwinnable challenge. It does require certain things from you, though, like maintaining your focus and delegating work to the appropriate level.
It also demands that you build up your resilience. You will face failures and need the mental strength to shake them off. Good CEOs also keep an eye on the numbers and embrace technology.
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