Discover actionable tips to scale your business, avoid pitfalls, and transition from owner to CEO in today's edition of Emerge Insights.
Read time: 3.35 minutes.
What's in store for today?
- The Pitfalls of Planning Without Reality
- Mastering the Shift from Owner to CEO
- Downtime
Dear {{first_name}},
I recently interviewed Mackey McNeill, CEO and Founder of MACKEY, about her entrepreneurial journey and the lessons she’s learned along the way.
In this clip, Mackey shares her experience with strategic planning and the common pitfalls many businesses face when their plans are disconnected from reality.
Mackey recounts how she hired a strategic planner to help grow her firm, only to discover that the plan created was completely out of touch with her company's reality.
The excitement and motivation generated by the plan quickly faded as they realized it lacked practical metrics and connection to the core of the business.
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As a business owner, this clip will prompt you to reflect on your current business strategies and help you avoid the pitfalls Mackey faced, guiding you toward plans that align with your business's needs and realities.
Key Takeaways:
- The importance of aligning strategic plans with the current reality of your business.
- Why abstract planning can lead to ineffective execution.
- Ensure your plans are actionable and connected to your business's core operations.
This is just a snippet of our conversation—stay tuned for the full interview, which will be released in September.
2. Mastering the Shift from Owner to CEO
Scaling a business can feel like playing whack-a-mole: You sort out one issue, and another rears its ugly head.
The reason?
Two pivotal shifts every owner must make...
- Transitioning from an owner to a CEO mindset
- Building a high-performing, cohesive leadership team
Most entrepreneurs start a business to solve a problem. We see something that isn’t working properly, and with a vision for improving it, we rally a group of people to help us bring the solution to life.
The business grows quickly... initially.
But then something happens... it plateaus.
As the saying goes, a fish rots from the head...
The business plateaus because the team hasn’t grown at the same pace as the company. Without a capable leadership team in place to drive the business forward, the owner often becomes the bottleneck, inadvertently hindering further growth.
Most businesses never emerge from the start-up phase. Instead, they remain chaotic, stuck in a growth purgatory.
But what worked during the early years becomes a liability when you try to scale. The reason is simple: You can’t manage growing complexity within a framework of chaos.
As your customer base expands, your team grows, and pressures increase, the challenges multiply. Without embracing the role of a true CEO, you risk becoming the bottleneck in your own business.
The unsettling reality is that your business starts to own you rather than the other way around.
Moreover, the more indispensable you are to the daily operations, the less valuable your business becomes.
This is one of the top reasons many businesses never get sold.
But there’s a way out:
You need to regain control and escape the chaos.
Think of your business as an Olympic team. Winning-or even competing-requires three things:
- A game plan
- A playing field and score
- A world-class team
The same principles apply in business. Every winning business team needs:
- A Game Plan
- A-players in the right roles
- A Scoreboard
- and... a Coach
Without these elements, growth and scaling become nearly impossible. Plus, it’s hard to focus on strategic initiatives that increase your business’s value–and free up your weekends to spend time with your kids!
Before I can help any business owner build a high-value business that can one day be sold for millions, we need to ensure these foundations are rock solid.
Want to learn how to accelerate growth and boost your company value - join our upcoming Foundations for Growth Masterclass 👇
3. Downtime - on holiday this week...
I'm taking a break with my family this week. On a walk home from the lake last week, my eldest daughter reminded me how important it is to take a break.
One quote to start the week strong
"If we take care of the moments, the years will take care of themselves."
—Maria Edgeworth.
If our decisions now shape our future ...what would your future self tell you?
Have a great week!
- Jean
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