How to overcome a first time CEO anxiety and drive success

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Yuliya Valko on 11/23/2017.

It’s interesting to watch how some people spend years on earning a degree, hoping it will help them to become a successful entrepreneur. In most cases entrepreneurs don’t have time to “get prepared” and simply must “learn on the job” once a new business opportunity arises. So, what do you do when you have a chance to start your own business without any experience or proper education and things develop faster than you've thought? You definitely can't postpone it till better times since the window of opportunity will be closed then. So, you simply take the leap and start your entrepreneurial journey, hoping and fighting for success. As a first-time CEO, most entrepreneurs struggle with a lot of topics that are outside their expertise: Programmers might struggle with accounting, managers with technology, finance experts with leadership, etc. – the list goes on and there’s certainly a lot to learn. However, there are couple tricks to compensate the lack of experience and skills and still drive your company towards success!

“If somebody offers you an amazing opportunity but you are not sure you can do it, say yes – then learn how to do it later!” ― Richard Branson

The best way is probably to combine learning with practice. It is great when you have a chance to implement new knowledge in your company right away and see how it works, instead of endlessly building up the theoretical knowledge and still feeling not quite ready to start the business. While you need to keep learning, and absorbing lots of information it is also important not to get lost among the variety of available resource that promise you quick results. Besides the well-known online courses, here are couple options of online learning that can become real life-savers for busy individuals:

  • edX - an educational platform that connects learners to the best universities and institutions from around the world.
  • Open University - the world leader in distance learning.

Here is also a useful link to 17 Top Rated and Best Selling Business Courses Online. No matter what choice you will make, remember that no course or training can substitute the real-life experience. Being a company that serves small and growing businesses we love to ask our customers about their success stories. Each of them has its own history with valuable lessons learned. It made us realize that sometimes the best source of entrepreneurship advice is right next door.

Here we would like to share some proven tips that we've learned from successful entrepreneurs that will help you to overcome a first time CEO anxiety:

  • Find a partner that shares your idea and complements your skills and experience. It's ok that you can’t have all of the superpowers. In fact, nobody does. That's what partners are for.
  • Build a team of professionals that bring the necessary expertise and are able to close the existing gaps in your company.
  • Find a mentor to guide you through your entrepreneurial journey. Don't hesitate to reach out to the best industry players that you consider your role models.
  • Use a business technology as a leverage. It will help to cope with multitasking and stay organized, manage your team (including remote) and allows you to integrate and automate the core aspects of your business. By the way, this is why we created ZeyOS in the first place: We solved our own problem by creating a central “Business Layer” for all our business endeavors.
  • Become a salesman of your own product. Sales is a moving force of your business. That’s why you must be the #1 sales manager in your company and be ready to sell your product anywhere and anytime. Focus on developing the art of selling and inspire your team by your own example.
  • Build a system that would be able to function with the minimum of your micromanagement. In other words - learn to delegate.
  • Be radically transparent, especially towards your customers and your employees. Trying to cover up errors and weaknesses will always fire back and damage the relationships with your peers.

"The greatest leader is not necessarily the one who does the greatest things. He is the one that gets the people to do the greatest things." — Ronald Reagan

Whenever you feel overwhelmed with all the responsibilities on your shoulders, think about your long-term goals. Keeping the vision of the bigger picture usually helps to overcome the challenges and difficulties. That's why here at ZeyOS we see our role in helping companies to automate business processes and minimize the managers' distractions from their core priorities. So, what do you need to do next? Go execute and create your own success story.

P.S.: Reach out on Twitter, if you want to share your success story on our blog! We are happy to hear from you!