- There's this distinct point in time for every founder,
for every founder's journey
where you make the transition from being just the founder
to being CEO.
I've gone through this transition myself
and when I was making that transition
there were some counterintuitive things
that I had to deal with.
I had to restructure my days.
I have to approach my job in a whole different way.
I had to get used to managing people
that reported directly to me
that were twice my age with four times the experience.
So in this episode, I'm gonna walk you through
the three principles that you absolutely need to know
to manage this transition,
to transition from founder to CEO,
so that you can be the leader you need to be
to grow your SAS business
and take it to the next stage of growth.
Intro.
(upbeat music)
What's everybody, welcome to Unstoppable, I'm TK.
And on this channel I help SAS founders like you grow
your SAS businesses faster with an unstoppable strategy.
If you are new to the channel
be sure to the subscribe button and that bell icon
because I drop a video like this with actionable strategies
to grow your SAS business
two to three times a week with the TK energy.
If you are part of my SAS coaching programs,
if you are part of this community, welcome back.
It's really awesome to see you over here.
Now, I remember with ToutApp when we hit about 12 people.
When we hit 12 people I finally, finally agreed
to change my business card,
my email signature to say CEO instead of just founder.
And there was a very good reason for this.
I refused to call myself CEO until we
at least had 12 to 15 employees.
Because then finally I had something
to actually chiefly execute over.
Before that I was just a founder, we were a team,
everyone kinda just worked together
to make something happen, that's how I looked at it.
But as it was making that transition
it became very apparent to me,
and thankfully I had some mentors and advisors
that also guided me in this,
that I had to change how I approached my job, my day to day.
There were some big shifts I had to make
to actually be a true CEO, not only that was needed,
but also what the company and the employees really wanted.
And so in this episode I'm gonna walk you through
the three principles.
And actually I have a bonus one for you this time,
the four principles, really, the three plus one
that you absolutely need to know
to make that transition from founder to founder and CEO.
How you need to actually restructure your days,
think about your job, think about a certain cadence.
I'm gonna walk you through all of it.
So if you're excited to dig in
go and smash that like button.
And let's go into principle number one.
So principle number one is you absolutely need
to first hire a VA or an EA,
a virtual assistant or an executive assistant.
Once you hit a certain number of employees,
let's just say 12 to 15,
you have to start thinking about
what are the jobs that you're doing?
What are the tasks that you're doing on a routine basis,
on a regular that are just literally below your pay grade?
And it's not because you're too good to do it.
It's because the company needs you to do other things.
And for every founder and I had this, in fact,
my friend Zander, Zander Ford, is an amazing friend,
he had to force me to, he was like
you have to at least hire a $15 an hour VA.
At least do that and start to offload some tasks.
And I was like, okay, let me do that.
And it was game-changing
because it helped me realize
there was a bunch of repetitive tasks that I was doing
that I really didn't need to do.
And very cheaply we could get done through a VA
and I could learn to delegate.
And by hiring that VA it allowed me to start to shift into,
okay, there are a whole bunch of things that I do,
what are the things that I can delegate to others?
And what are the things
that no one else in the company can do?
And let me delegate the things that I can delegate
so I can focus on the things that need to get done
that no one else in the company can do.
And hiring a VA and then hiring an EA actually allowed me
to get into that mindset
and become a better person at delegating.
So principle number one that I always tell founders
that are making the transition to CEO is
start with a virtual assistant
or switch to an executive assistant,
whatever you can afford depending on how much you've raised
and what stage your company is in.
Start with something like this.
There are VAs out there that can start at $5 an hour.
There are VAs out there that can start at $15 an hour.
There are VAs out there that can charge you $55 an hour
because they're based in the states.
It really depends.
It really depends on the capabilities that you need
and the tasks that you need to offset.
But start to think about how you can get a virtual assistant
to actually delegate certain tasks
so that you can focus on the things that no one else can do.
Once you've done that, then principle number two
ends up becoming, you need to set up your calendar.
See, one of the things that is not really set is
you're a CEO, but you're not really a CEO.
You know, you think about a CEO of a fortune 500 company.
That CEO job is very different.
You think about 1,000-person SAS business,
that CEO job is wildly different
than your 15 person company and your CEO gig.
The thing is when you are the CEO
and founder of an early stage company
you're essentially in a hybrid role.
You're in a hybrid role where you are following both a maker
and a manager schedule.
There's this thing around a maker's schedule
versus a manager schedule.
Paul Graham wrote about it a while ago.
I'll link to the article below.
It's always good to read.
The whole idea behind it is people
either have maker schedules or manager schedules.
And if you try to actually combine the two
it's very hard to do both.
Meaning context switching, context switching
between managing someone doing a one-on-one
and then jumping right back into coding, for example,
or looking at your marketing copy, or tweaking your ads,
making that switch between managing
and creating or making is super, super difficult.
And the reality is while it is difficult
and that context switching is really hard,
that's the reality of your job as early stage CEO.
You have to switch between managing and making,
managing and making.
And the best thing that you can do for yourself
is to own that.
To say, you know what, I'm gonna actually have
to set aside some work blocks.
This is what I did.
I started setting aside some work blocks
of two to three hours in the day
where it would be no meetings.
There would be no managing.
And it would be a good chunk
where I could just go heads down and get work done
and not be interrupted.
What that allowed me to do was actually commit
to the things I needed to make, I needed to create,
that I was still responsible for
while also setting aside time for managing.
And it allowed me to actually think proactively
about my calendar and actually set up the right work blocks,
set up the right meetings
so that I could actually run my week in an effective way
between being a maker and also a manager.
So that's principle number two,
start to think about your calendar
and how you can split it up between actual management time
and making time because likely there are a bunch of things
you're still creating and you're responsible for,
no one else can do.
And it's not quite just being a CEO,
it's also doing that other hat that you wear,
which is founder.
So that's principle number two, super, super powerful.
Now, before I go to three and four, four is the bonus one,
let me just pause here for a second.
If you starting to see the power in this,
if you're starting to see the power in delegating
the low-level tasks that no one else can do,
if you're starting to see the power of delegating tasks
that you're just not capable of doing,
I have an entire team around me now
and neither of the things
that I'm not capable of doing well at all
and so I rely on them for helping me
if you're starting to see the power in that,
if you're starting to see the power in the fact
that this is a hybrid role
and you should set up your calendar accordingly.
Can I just get a yes in the comments below,
also smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm
really likes it when you do that.
Now, if you were at this stage where you're seed funded,
you starting to scale revenues
and you're switching to CEO mode, you're hiring
and you need coaching around this,
you need an actual system to follow
be sure to check out my SaaS coaching program.
I'll tell you more about that in this video.
Let's go to principle number three,
but smash that like button if you haven't already.
Principle number three
is you should establish a management cadence.
What do I mean by that?
Management can become a system also.
Management shouldn't be ad hoc.
It shouldn't just be like, hey, what's up?
How's it going?
You should have a system around it.
Now, here's how I like to do it
and here's how I've seen a lot of successful CEOs
that I've worked with or worked for do it.
Firstly, you should have a weekly leadership team meeting
where you review key metrics.
This should be a meeting either on Monday or Tuesday.
It should be early in the morning.
It should be probably in about an hour and a half
where you and all your direct reports,
the key leaders in the company
as you start to recruit them and grow them,
come in and you all sit down
and there's a very specific agenda of things
that you're gonna look through, the metrics,
the KPIs you're gonna look through.
The discussion items are gonna go through.
This is how you make sure that you're driving alignment
across all the leaders in the team
as you start to build them out.
Now, I started with just on all hands team meeting
when we were at six people.
As we started to hire VPs and managers
I started to actually make sure
that the key leaders were in that meeting.
As we started to grow the company we also made sure
that there was a meeting with my direct reports
and those direct reports if there were mid-level managers
they had their own management team meetings
to make sure that we're just all aligned every week
to honor what our key goals are, what the key blockers are,
what our key metrics are.
And that way we could actually make sure
that we keep our finger on the pulse of the business
versus just going by feelings
and just making it more of a therapy session.
And so that was super important,
setting up a management cadence
started with our weekly leadership meetings.
In addition to the weekly leadership meetings
I also set up weekly one-on-ones with my key direct reports.
This made sure that we could meet one-on-one
and this could be 30 minutes.
It could be a walking session.
It could be a Zoom session.
It could be an hour depending on the scale
and span of the job.
But we made sure that we had that one-on-one
to actually look at the metrics, look at our key priorities,
look at blockers and just make sure
that they have everything they need
to be successful in their role.
Now, it started with weekly one-on-ones,
but as I started to hire VPs I switched them to monthly
because they required less supervision.
But when I had younger managers
or managers that were first-time managers
I had weekly just to make sure they were set up for success.
But this made sure that there was a structure on.
Every week we would meet as a leadership team,
make sure we understand all the issues
and progress around the business.
And then if there were some big hairy things
in a specific department
we would handle that in the one-on-ones.
But it made sure that there was always
a guaranteed touch point to make sure
that everyone was on track and when we're looking at
the right KPIs around the business.
Now the third piece I did to establish a management cadence
was also establish, OKRs, objectives and key results.
OKR is a framework that helps you create a strategy
and a set and a direction for your company.
And it looks at, okay, what are the big key results?
And what are the big objectives we wanna tackle?
This is typically done on a quarterly basis.
You set OKRs for the year
and also break them down into quarterlies.
So what we always made sure it was
we made sure to align everything we were doing,
everything we were looking into to our quarterly OKRs.
Now, if you wanna learn more about OKRs
and how to set up this management cadence
be sure to check out this video
where I go much more into detail on how to set up OKRs
and why they're so powerful.
I also give you an actual framework to follow on how
to create a strategy for your company using OKRs
inside of my coaching program.
So you may be interested in that as well.
Now I have one more for you
because this is just super important,
if you're at this stage where, you know, you're seed funded
or you're growing, you have revenues, you're hiring
and you're switching to CEO mode,
first of all, congratulations, this is awesome.
Second of all, chances are one of
the big things you're gonna have to be super vigilant about,
especially in this environment is recruiting.
So the last bonus one I have for you
is you should set up a process for recruiting.
Because little by little, you know,
while you may have this hybrid role right now
what you're really doing is
you're making sure your company grows.
Your leaders are successful
and little by little you're giving away more
and more of your maker responsibilities.
You're hiring better and better people
to take over those key areas.
So eventually you become a true CEO
where you're really not directly responsible for
the creation of anything,
you're clearly putting in the right people.
In order to do that, in order to keep driving the growth,
you need to make sure you're able
to recruit the right people in.
And so recruiting VPs, recruiting directors,
recruiting great talent becomes almost a full-time job
as you go into full CEO mode.
The best CEOs I've always worked for
they were hypervigilant about recruiting talent.
They had their own systems,
they had their own processes.
Now, if you're digging more into
how do I recruit my first set of VPs, VP of sales,
VP of marketing, VP of engineering?
I did an entire video on this as well
on how to actually go about recruiting your key VPs
in an early stage.
Some of you should check that out as well.
So those are the key things as you're starting
to transition from being a founder to CEO,
it's not just about how you run a single day.
It's how you adopt the system
to be a successful early stage CEO.
And these are my core principles around it.
First start by offloading your very basic tasks.
Hire a VA or an EA, and get that going.
Second, set up your calendar
so that you accommodate for a maker
and also a manager schedule.
You accommodate for both
because that's what you're responsible for.
Number three, establish a management cadence.
I'll link to the videos I talked about down below.
And number four, embrace recruiting
because you're gonna be doing a lot more of that
and get really, really good at it.
You got value from this video,
be sure to smash that like button for the YouTube algorithm.
If you wanna work with me, if you wanna hire me
as your coach so that I can help you make this transition
be a great CEO for your SAS business,
go to tkkader.com/apply A-P-P-L-Y.
You can apply to get on a strategy call with me
where we can talk through what your needs are,
what stage you're in and if I can help.
It's super easy to just go there
and fill out the information and then we'll get on a call.
Also, if you got value, be sure to share this video
with your fellow founders and team members,
we've put a lot of love into these.
I also drop a video like this two to three times a week.
So be sure to the subscribe button and that bell icon
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every single time I drop an episode.
And lastly, remember everyone needs a strategy
for their life and their business,
when you are with us yours is gonna be unstoppable.
I'm TK.
I'll see you in the next episode
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