Clueless: Running a Company When You Don’t Know How
I recently came across this question on Quora: “What happens when your company reaches past your skill level?” The asker was heading up a fast-growing company and concerned that he’d reached the limit of his ability.
No one rolls out of bed in the morning knowing how to start and grow a company.
I started my first company around 12 years ago. I’d never been responsible for landing clients. Never done payroll. Never had the freedom to do anything I wanted with the caveat that if chose poorly, the company would fail. I did it anyway and figured it out.
People said, “Maybe you should stay with a job that gives you a paycheck?”
Paychecks are alright I guess. If you go that route, however, you’ll never know if you can become a person that knows how to hire people, organize them into a team, and lead them to accomplish things bigger than one person can.
My first company hit a wall at around 7 people and I ended up selling it. Then I started another one and took it to 22 people and around 7x the revenue of the first business. I became a person who understands how to build a bigger business and organize larger groups of people. I know a lot more about identifying markets, evaluating business opportunities, and figuring out who the right people are to help us grow. We’ll find ourselves bumping up against another wall eventually, and when we do, I’ll know it’s because I’ve hit the limit of my skills and expertise… again.
I’ll also know that I’ve been there before, and figured it out.
It doesn’t matter that you don’t have the skills and expertise to be the CEO of a large company. No one does unless they’ve been one. Every large company CEO had to earn those skills through trying, failing, and repeating. It’s certainly possible that people have some sort of intrinsic limit of ability. The only thing I know for certain is that as soon as you listen to other people who say “can’t,” you’ll never find yours.
Calvin Coolidge said it best:
“Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not: nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not: the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.”
I highly recommend reading The Hard Thing About Hard Things. It’s straight advice from one CEO that’s been there and done that, to the rest of us CEOs that are still figuring things out.
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