You Built the Company — Now Don’t Be the One Holding It Back

When you take the leap of faith to bring your vision, your idea, to life and start your company, you wear many hats and take on many tasks. You develop the business plan and deck pitch, help build a great product or service offering, create and implement the marketing strategies, make sales, handle customer service and get take-out for everyone during the late nights they’re working. You’re on the front line.

Once you get your company off the ground and running, however, it’s time to grow, which means scaling and letting go of micro-controlling every single thing. This requires a shift in mindset to transition from being a founder to a leader and CEO.

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Have confidence in your team

Take your time with early hires in your startup. It’s critical to have the right people in the right positions so that when the time comes, you can feel good about letting go of every task, every decision and every interaction that you have been accustomed to doing while founding the business.

You want a team that is ready and equipped to lead in their areas of expertise when you take the reins as CEO.

Let go of control

While getting the company off the ground, you’ve been used to being involved in every detail, so letting go is hard. You built your reputation on certain standards and have a sense of security that, if you continue to control everything yourself, these standards will not falter. It takes accepting uncertainty and trusting others that they will meet — even exceed those standards — and execute in a way that will preserve your reputation and profitability.

But to be an effective CEO and lead the company to the next level, you need to get out of your own way. If every decision requires your approval and oversight, it only creates bottlenecks that impede growth. Morale also suffers when your staff feels dejected and powerless to contribute to the company’s success. You’re missing out on nurturing a collaborative environment where different voices can inspire fresh perspectives.

Redefine your value as CEO

The vision you had as a founder made your product or services marketable and your hard work made the business a success. Now it’s time to move from being a builder to an architect of that vision, expanding it. Focus on strategy and the big picture, not execution. This goes back to letting go of micromanaging workflows, staff and the day-to-day. Communicate what needs to happen and by whom and why. And leave the how up to your team.

Seek advice, solicit feedback

As a CEO, you want to be constantly learning to help fuel your vision. Seek advice from experienced leaders who can become your mentors and provide insights and perspectives to help you make better decisions, avoid costly missteps and stay focused on long-term growth.

Continue to cultivate leaders

As your company scales from 10 or 20 employees to a couple of hundred or more, it’s critical to continue nurturing leaders. As CEO, you want to shape and empower the individuals who will run each of your divisions. It’s your role to create an environment where people thrive, take ownership and are accountable for their work. You want leaders and their teams who are invested in the company’s success, who realize that, when the business excels, they will excel as well.

For example, the founder of a small managing general agency serving several niche markets built the firm into a billion-dollar company with national reach in a few years. Initially, he was involved in every task and transaction — from hiring staff to developing products, working with underwriters, negotiating terms and contracts with insurers, providing input to the tech team to build a proprietary quote-bind platform, acquiring additional products to expand offerings, working on marketing and sales strategies, and more.

He hit the reset button as CEO to scale the business, with each division leader taking full ownership of strategy, operations and results within their respective areas. Today, the company is an industry leader in its space.

Measure long-term success

As a CEO, measuring progress shifts from assessing completed tasks (checking those boxes) to focusing on key performance indicators (KPIs). These KPIs include the sales growth rate, which measures how quickly your revenue increases over time; your gross profit margin; customer acquisition cost; customer retention rate; and your business model flexibility, which assesses how well you can pivot the business to adapt to market changes.

Staying disciplined on these metrics requires surrounding yourself with experienced advisors and professional partners who have helped businesses like yours scale. They help you establish the right measurements, strengthen your foundation and guide the path forward.

How well the company performs will depend on how well you perform as a CEO, not as a founder who hangs on to total control. Having confidence in your leadership abilities and trusting your team to carry out your vision will enable you to scale the business and achieve sustainable growth.

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When you take the leap of faith to bring your vision, your idea, to life and start your company, you wear many hats and take on many tasks. You develop the business plan and deck pitch, help build a great product or service offering, create and implement the marketing strategies, make sales, handle customer service and get take-out for everyone during the late nights they’re working. You’re on the front line.

Once you get your company off the ground and running, however, it’s time to grow, which means scaling and letting go of micro-controlling every single thing. This requires a shift in mindset to transition from being a founder to a leader and CEO.