How to Focus as A CEO (3 key things)

Summary

The course "How to focus as a CEO" should be the first taught in MBA Schools. Sadly, this crucial skill isn't taught nor discussed much. As a result, CEOs worldwide suffer from a low performance at their jobs, setting a bad example for their employees and compromising the growth of the business. In this video, I discuss how 3 key things to do if you want to become a laser-focused CEO and get a lot more done in a lot less time.

Transcript

All top performing CEOs focus on the same three things

Number one, Leon Castillo here founder of Selfmastered which is a company that specializes in peak county performance for entrepreneurs and business leaders, we help people grow their businesses by accelerate their personal performance.

Today, I want to discuss something that is absolutely crucial for you to understand, if you manage any sort of business doesn't matter if you're a one man band, or the CEO of a public corporation, because in the end, any irrespective of the business cycle, the type of business, how was the stage of the business, a CEO should always be focused on three things and three things on and getting this wrong is probably what geo paradise is a growth of any business.

Number one thing is designing the systems that will make the business outcome inevitable. The best way to win at life really, and in business is to see reality as a collection of systems that are functioning at perfection, everything we get is the product of a system that is working perfectly. And if we don't like the outcome is because we haven't optimized that system.

Let's say that you are of course willing to increase revenue, which is the number one goal of any business. Well, you need to really map out what is the system that is actually bringing you leads, and selling those leads and transforming them into clients and then getting results so that those clients refer people back to the business.

That's a system that can be optimized and tweaked for perfection. that's job number one of the CEO designing architecting ml, so that the outcomes that the CEO wants are a matter of time and not a matter of champs number two is optimizing and tweaking those systems is devoting time, capital and attention to make those systems more effective over time, because in the end, it's all about efficiencies and operations gains, the business or person that can operate more effectively, meaning make less trade offs to get the goals that he wants, will win in the marketplace, anytime.

So that's functional to optimize the systems to perfection. And number three is hiring the best people available to manage those systems. So the CEO becomes an overseer of systems designer, someone that is actually overseeing each department that is headed by a particular person. So that those are the three things one is designing system two is optimizing those systems, and three, hiring the best people available to manage those systems.

And this is a universal truth that is irrespective of the stage of the business you're at doesn't mean you're a one man band, or the CEO of a product operation should always be seeing your business as a system, each department as a sub system. And your role is to devote time, capital and attention to make sure that everything is working to perfection.

And the most important thing to be said here though, is, of course, when you are an early stage entrepreneur, the focus of that systems building process is different than when you are the CEO of a public corporation. And this is probably what most early stage entrepreneurs get wrong, because anything other than getting revenue is just a waste of time if you are just starting out.

And this is something that may sound obvious, but it is very popular in the latest decade, to build businesses that do not have a clear path towards profitability, that it keeps raising rounds after round after round of money, in hopes that the growth experience will eventually justify a valuation and they will find ways to monetize the audience or the customers or the client base that they are obtaining.

This of course can work wonders if you are Facebook, but it cannot work so well. If you are Uber who still isn't profitable after 10 years in the making. And when you're an early stage entrepreneur, you absolutely need to focus on revenue, what is the critical path what is the shortest path between your product and the best results possible for a new client? What is that path? What is that system and focus so that everything you do goes in this line from getting a product to the customer, customer buying the product customer using the product and customer having results based on the product.

That's the number one focus Any early stage entrepreneur should be doing. And based on the same framework of designing system optimizing system and hiring people, over time, you will graduate from designing the system and make it operate to perfection to actually hiring people that know more than you do about those systems.

So they can improve the systems in a better way that you ever could. But the focus should always be the critical path, how to bring revenue into the business. And I say this because when you raise money, you tend to lead too much entropy into the system of your business. So you start like valuing things that may not be exactly what needs to be done so that you increase revenue, right?

When you have too much money on the bank account, you probably start prioritizing stuff that isn't exactly part of the critical path. And as a result, you burn money that gets no, our Oh, so this is my two cents on this. I've invested in 37 companies as a VC in Spain. So I know a thing or two, about business and investments and startups. And this is what I always tell everybody what is a critical path towards revenue and how to create systems that make that revenue as reliable and predictable as possible.

Because remember that a business is a machine that has to reliably and predictably acquire customers that have a reliable and predictable outcome from their investment with you, so that they can reliably and predictably refer people. This is a business machine that makes profit in a reliable and predictable way. And the only way of organizing reality so that the outcome you want is reliable and predictable is via systems.

So a CEO is the ultimate systems builder. I hope this was useful. Please let me know in the comments if you've ever thought of business in this way, and what is what can we cover in future videos so that we can keep helping you in your journey as a newly minted CEO or entrepreneurs. And of course, if you want a proven path towards peak performance that is based on this same system thinking applied to some master performance accelerator, we'll be happy to see how can we best help you achieve your goals. If this has been useful? Please subscribe so you do not miss out on any future videos. Thank you very much.