What makes a SoloPreneur is not the lack of employees. Some companies without employees contract everything from sales, to production, to answering their phone. They are functionally equivalent to one of the other groups because the management frustrations you face are more like those with employees (even though legally and technically you don’t have employees).
Examples of true solopreneurs: Artists (graphic and fine), consultants, plumbers and other trades people, dog walkers, coaches, piano teachers, wedding planners.
The critical success factors of a solopreneur business model are these.
Call me. 203-775-6676. I’m on eastern time. Or shoot me an email: john@betterceo.com.
Let me know what questions you have and we’ll see if it makes sense for us to work together.
Companies at this stage have employees doing different jobs. But usually they lack formal departments or managers of those departments. Most employees wear several hats and do what’s needed at the moment. This is not always a bad thing.
In fact it’s useful for this reason: companies at any stage need all the functions performed by big companies. But they usually don’t need them full time. Nor can they afford a full time position for many functions. That’s why employees have to wear many hats.
One other characteristic of these companies is they are frugal.
What’s missing is they often don’t have time to plan for the future. They tend to management from crisis to crisis thinking they don’t have time to be strategic. And that often becomes a barrier that prevents growth. That is a bad thing.
The first place to start is The Company Blue Print. My program called 20 questions will help you specify what you want from your company at this time in your life and translate that into a blue print that will help develop your company so it can achieve your personal goals.
After that we usually work on better cash flow management. Why? Because taking time away from the day to day to focus on the future requires cash.
The next step is to document work flows and job expectations. Expectations (rather than descriptions) define what you expect a person to produce. This leads to better management, fewer crises and a more organized company.
Call me. 203-775-6676. I’m on eastern time. Or shoot me an email: john@betterceo.com.
Let me know what questions you have and we’ll see if it makes sense for us to work together.
This is a critical stage for a CEO. For the company to grow you need to stop acting like a one-man band, and more like a conductor. But with a difference. An orchestra conductor makes none of the sound him or herself, but is responsible for all of it. Companies of this size rarely need a full-time CEO. That means you’ll spend some time playing an instrument.
Call me. 203-775-6676. I’m on eastern time. Or shoot me an email: john@betterceo.com.
Let me know what questions you have and we’ll see if it makes sense for us to work together.
Can you go away for a week? A month? As your firm grows beyond 50 employees the CEO spends less time dealing with day to day situations and more time planning for the future.
That means you need systems and managers in place to deal with the ongoing operations and keep them up to the standards that have got your company where it is. In other words, the wisdom and experience that you’ve developed can’t just live in people’s heads. It has to be transferred throughout the company.
The way to do that is by having standardized processes for routine tasks. This must be done in a way that doesn’t burden people with needless bureaucracy. You should also allow for new ideas to arise and be incorporated into the systems quickly.
But what about your job? As CEO you’ll now have time to focus on the more strategic aspects of growing the company.
Programs I have that help with this include:
Call me. 203-775-6676. I’m on eastern time. Or shoot me an email: john@betterceo.com.
Let me know what questions you have and we’ll see if it makes sense for us to work together.
Every start-up by definition is a small company and they all have the same problem: They don’t have enough revenue to pay for ongoing operations. However there are different ways to solve this problem and choosing the right one depends on knowing which kind of company the start-up is likely to become when it grows up. Choosing the wrong one can be fatal.
There are 4 kinds of small companies. What makes them different is the potential scope of the business and this is defined by business model and the owner’s goals.
To get over the hump of being a start-up it’s critical to know which kind of company yours is. Then develop a plan to raise money and scale in the most appropriate way.
Call me. 203-775-6676. I’m on eastern time. Or shoot me an email: john@betterceo.com.
Let me know what questions you have and we’ll see if it makes sense for us to work together.
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