One of the challenges of owning your own business is that you are both the CEO, responsible for the day-to-day decisions and direction of the company AND you are also the principal investor responsible for the long-term health of the business and interested in improving the equity value of the firm.
To use a sports analogy, you are both the owner and the coach. That’s not a structure that has a positive track record in professional sports!
From time-to-time, I recommend that you stop and take off your CEO hat, and put on your owner hat for a few minutes and see what kind of job your CEO is doing… (This is something I do with clients — helping them to have a performance review.)
Since today is officially the mid-point of 2019, maybe it’s a good day to take a minute and glance up at the scoreboard and see how things are looking?
- Did your CEO set any goals in January? Did you and your CEO agree to any major initiatives? Where do those things stand? Has appropriate progress been made?
- How is your progress on moving from making money strictly by trading dollars for hours toward making money from your intellectual property?
- How’s lead generation going? Do you have enough leads, that are closing into profitable projects? Do too many of your leads come from one source?
- What’s the health of your client roster? Do you have too much business concentrated in a few clients?
- What’s the team look like? Are there more grownups than there were six months ago?
- What’s the overall financial picture look like? Are sales growing? Are prices going up? Profits increasing (as a percentage)? Cash in a good spot?
- Has your CEO been spending more money than she’s bringing in, or have we built a cushion from which we can make some investments in future growth?
- What’s the trend on pricing and cash flow? When was the last time you CEO raised prices?
What other things would your owner want to ask of your CEO?
If you want help having a conversation like that — if you think a review of your performance might be helpful. Hit reply, and we can set one up.
P.S. July 4th is a holiday here in the US, so I’m going to be skipping my regular emails on 7/4 and 7/6 — I’ll be back in your inbox on 7/9. Look forward to talking then!
