Note: We use AI transcription so there may be some inaccuracies
Laura Hargrave: Welcome everyone here at Boss It. We would love to hear from you. Join us in our Boss It community by heading over to our website, bossitclub.com, and join our mailing list. As we grow, we will be launching our community of fellow Boss It BFFs, and we want you to be a part of it.
Okay, Sophia Noreen, let's dig into this. I can't wait to tell them all about how we got here.
Sophia Noreen: What's up everyone? Welcome to another fantastic episode of the Boss at podcast. My name is Sophia Norine. If we have not chatted before and today I wanna chat about what is a ceo, and I wanna give you three tips on what I feel are important characteristics or skills that a CEO should possess or try to.
So what is a ceo? Well, we all know inherently what a CEO is. They are the leader of the company. They're the ones who report to a governance structure like a board. And if these are new phrases for you, I will put some links below so you can go ahead and look up what governance is. But if you are a company or you form a company and you incorporate and you're no longer.
Doing a sole proprietorship, then you would have to report to a board of directors. So we'll talk about that later on, but I'll put a link below for now so you can check out what a governance board of directors could look like. For now, I wanna just say a CEO is the one who will set the vision for the company.
They are the ones who will say, This is the strategy. And we are going to do these things to get to this big goal. So for our company, also, Sophia, I am the ceo, and I have been since the inception of the company, and of course I had to set the strategy in order for us to hit our big goals, our financial goals, and our developmental goals, and our product goals, and our partner goals, and all the goals that are associated with running that.
And so when I did that, of course I needed to have the vision to be able to say, Okay, these are the products that are going to be placed in this particular retailer, and our vision is to be at this retailer at this time of the year. And that was really me doing the CEO role. What ends up happening for a lot of people, especially new CEOs or.
Leaders of a company is that they tend to try to do everything. And so I'm gonna leave you with a few tips on how to level up your CEO game. If you are starting a business or you are thinking about starting a business, this is things that you can do today to increase your capacity as a CEO from a mindset perspective.
And then how can you apply your mindset or these perspective? To your everyday life today in order to be able to exercise the skills that you need to become a CEO or a successful ceo. So let's get into those three tips next. So my first tip is that you really need to learn to delegate and trust others.
Now, in past episodes we have chatted about delegation and the art of delegation and the importance of delegation and why you need to learn to strengthen that skill. So I will leave a link below for another episode that we did specifically on delegation. But for now, I want you to think. Activities that you might be doing in your business, or you might actually think about doing in the business if you haven't started a business yet that you could delegate out to somebody else.
Now, a great example for many online businesses is delegating out any type of social media. We've chatted about how social media is a hamster wheel and you have to continuously produce content and edit content and then publish content. And all of those steps take time and take energy and will actually take focus away from you being able to run your company, setting the vision and basically directing the company towards the next big goal or next big mission.
So learning how to delegate early on, even if you are a so entrepreneur, or even if you haven't started your business, is extremely important. You can start doing it at home, even asking a family member politely to, of course, do a task that you traditionally would do. That's a form of delegation. And then asking that individual if they could take ownership of that task, the benefit of delegating, and then ensuring that the individual who you've delegated the task two is that you only needed to do it once, and then the mission would be that they would continuously do it afterwards.
So for example, Most of our social media content has been delegated out to a wonderful team who does the editing and publishing on our behalf because it is something that was taking a lot of time away from us being able to produce in the business and be able to direct the business. And my skillset now has been refocused to putting the product on the shelf, working with big retailers and ensuring that we are on the right path.
On top of that, we have also been able to outsource all of our products to a warehouse, and our warehouse does all of our logistics. So that is another form of delegation, especially for my business owners who own products. If you're fulfilling yourself, that's fine in the beginning, you have to do that.
That's what we did, and I don't recommend moving into a warehouse or taking on any more expenses when you're first getting started. So when you get to a point in your business where you feel comfortable to go and find a third party. Logistics team, also known as three pl. Go ahead and look them up in your area and see if you can develop a partnership with them or they become one of your trusted logistic partners because this way, that work of fulfilling or packaging or doing whatever type of product based business, because when they take over the fulfillment of your orders, it will free up so much more time.
So again, I know it may seem really trivial, especially if you're early on in the game, but the skill of delegation is something you need to build upon, especially if you want to ensure that your skill set is being placed appropriately at the CEO level. The next tip is probably my favorite, and the reason why is because it's all about taking risks and exercising your tolerance for taking.
Being a CEO or starting a business is a risky endeavor. It's much easier for us to go out and get a job. It probably could even be more financially sound for many of us to go out and take a job, right? Because starting a business not only takes your energy time, but it also takes capital. Now, it could be your own capital if you're bootstrapping it, or it could be capital from a borrowed source.
Or maybe you are partnering up and you are the sweat equity and the other person is providing capital. Regardless, starting a business is risky, so yes, you are exercising the skill of taking risks, but what I'm gonna suggest is you continuously expand on that risk taking skill, not just starting the business, because starting the business is, yes, you've stepped off that podium, you're ready to jump, but you're going to have a series of occurrences in your business that are gonna ask you to make decision.
And sometimes those decisions are going to be risky and you're going to have to ask yourself, are you able to stomach the risk? There are so many things that I can think of with our also Sophia company, that we took a risk on being so small and being able to supply to such a big retailer early on in our ju.
Was probably a huge risk, but because I was able to say, This is a risk, but it's a worthwhile risk, it's a risk that I'm willing to take. And while my colleagues and team members were not exactly enthusiastic of taking on the risk so soon, they were okay to support because they felt comfortable, because I was comfort.
With taking on the risk. And so if you can start embodying that risk taking, and of course be responsible when you're doing your risk taking, but embody that confidence when you are risk taking. It will provide confidence to the rest of the team and rather than them spinning when they risk may be becoming a bit too risky, they all look for solutions as opposed to spin.
So we can chat about that in subsequent episodes or hit subscribe and follow if you have not done so yet. But influencing the team to be risk taking and influencing the team to be confident is what the CEO is responsible for. And you know, I don't wanna swear on the podcast, but some things roll downhill, poo poo rolls downhill.
So if your leader. Unable to stomach risks. If you as a CEO cannot stomach the risk, it'll be unlikely that your team members will be as enthusiastic to take on the risk too. So exercising your skill for risk taking in your personal life to be as easy as going on a new adventure where you're not used to going on.
So for example, if you're not a hyper and you wanna take on a new adventure and take a hike with your family, that could be an example of exercising risk, cuz perhaps you're not a hiker. I know a lot of people. Like to eat at the same restaurant or take on the same food venture out. And these are very simple examples, but what it's doing is it's programming you or priming you to be adventurous and take on risks.
And I know everybody has a different level of risk taking a different aptitude for risk taking. Obviously I am a risk taker and I don't shy away from opportunity or I don't shy away from things that are new and novel. I will explore them and then see if they're the right. Versus my siblings are the opposite actually, and they don't take on risks at all.
So they are well oiled to say, Hey, I'm good and happy to stay in my nine to five. I'm not gonna be part of a scrappy startup. I don't care to eat at new restaurants. I only go to the restaurants I like. So just keep in mind that if you're leading a company and it's something new and novel, you will be faced with risks over and over and over again.
It's not just the one time when you start the company and you have to be confident in your ability to take the risks and lead your team. Okay, let's go on to the last tip. My final tip kind of spins off the risk taking conversation, and that is your level of confidence. When you're leading a team or you're leading a company, it doesn't really matter.
Even leading yourself and your family, if you're confident on where you're going, what you're saying and what you're doing, your team will be confident as well. And so what is holding you back? And you have to ask your yourself what is holding you back from either executing on something you really wanna do or saying something you really wanna.
Usually this stems from our formative years. When we're young, perhaps something was said to us or we're programmed in a certain way. I know coming from a South Asian heritage and culture, women primarily are not seen in roles of leadership, and so that programming or that. Internal dialogue was probably what was holding me back for many years.
And I actually had one specific boss a few years back actually say to me, What's holding you back? Why are you not speaking up? Because inherently there were things that were happening that I knew probably weren't the right strategy for the company at the time, and I'm not talking about our company.
Also, Sophia, I'm talking about a company I previously worked at and I didn't say anything. I didn't speak up and. Asking yourself what is causing you or preventing you from speaking up and owning your experience? Being confident because you need to break down those internal dialogues. You need to understand what has been programmed in your psyche that may be preventing you from showing up in a confident manner.
Because if you're not confident, what's gonna end up happening is your team will sense it, your partners will sense it. And in business, if you don't exude confidence, it's unlikely people will take you seriously. So that is my third and final tip for today, for being able to level up and act as a CEO or aspire to be a business leader.
Because I think everything hinges on your ability to be confident. You have to be confident to be able to start your business. Of course, you have to have a level of confidence to delegate to other individuals and let them feel confident that they should take direction and lead from you. And then you have to be, of course, confident to take on risks.
So, In a nutshell, if you can really work on that final tip and really level up your confidence, there's no stopping you. Okay guys, I hope that was good for you and you enjoyed this segment. If you have any questions or comments, you can always follow us on Instagram and send us a DM at Boss at Club. You can also send a comment below this video if you're catching us on the.
And we release an episode every week, so make sure you hit subscribe and follow. We will put another exciting episode for you at the end screen so you can tap on that and check out more from what we have to offer. Otherwise, we'll see you next week and remember, make a plan and take action. And yes, you can have it all.
Talk to you later. Bye. So my fellow bosses, did you enjoy that episode? Now is time for you to make a solid plan and take action. But first, remember to subscribe and follow the boss at podcast so you receive a notification whenever we drop an episode. Remember to leave us a review on iTune. Take a screenshot of your review and shared on Instagram as a post or a story and tag us at Bost Club if Instagram's not your thing.
No. Email your screenshot to podcast boss club.com. As a massive thank you, we will be sending you our top 50 tips for starting and scaling a business. This list is exclusively for podcast reviewers, so don't miss out. Now, remember, bosses make a plan and take action in all aspects of your life. Yes, you can have it all.
