What makes a great CEO? Here’s what ChatGPT thinks…

I’m always pushing the business owners in my world to think more like a CEO than an owner operator… it’s a different mindset and very empowering for a business owner who often feels they are too busy slashing through the brambles to see what’s available to them on the other side of the forest.

I thought I’d see what ChatGPT had to say about ‘what makes a great CEO’. Here’s the response. What do you think?  And how would you rate yourself against each of the criteria below?

Me: What makes a great company CEO?
ChatGPT:
  1. Vision and Strategic Thinking: A great CEO is able to set a clear and inspiring vision for the company’s future and develop a strategic plan to achieve it. They must be forward-thinking, able to anticipate market trends, and adapt the company’s strategy accordingly.
  2. Leadership: Effective leadership is crucial. A great CEO leads by example, inspires their team, and fosters a positive and motivated work culture. They should be able to make tough decisions and guide the organization through challenges.
  3. Decisiveness: CEOs are often faced with complex decisions that impact the company’s direction. Being able to analyze information, weigh pros and cons, and make timely decisions is essential.
  4. Communication Skills: CEOs must be skilled communicators, able to convey their vision, goals, and strategy to employees, investors, customers, and other stakeholders. Clear and transparent communication helps build trust and alignment.
  5. Adaptability: The business landscape is ever-changing. A great CEO is adaptable and open to new ideas and approaches, willing to pivot the company’s strategy when necessary.
  6. Problem-Solving Abilities: CEOs encounter a range of challenges, from operational issues to market disruptions. Strong problem-solving skills allow them to identify root causes, explore solutions, and implement effective strategies.
  7. Emotional Intelligence: Understanding and managing emotions, both their own and those of others, is crucial for building strong relationships and fostering a positive work environment.
  8. Resilience: Leading a company comes with its share of setbacks and failures. Resilience allows a CEO to bounce back from challenges, learn from mistakes, and maintain a determined attitude.
  9. Strategic Delegation: A great CEO knows how to delegate tasks effectively, empowering their team members to contribute their expertise and freeing up their own time for more high-level strategic decisions.
  10. Ethical Integrity: Upholding ethical values and integrity is paramount. A CEO’s decisions and actions impact not only the company but also its reputation and the broader community.
  11. Industry Knowledge: CEOs should have a deep understanding of their industry, market trends, and competitors. This knowledge enables them to make informed decisions and capitalize on opportunities.
  12. Financial Acumen: A strong grasp of financial concepts and metrics is essential for managing the company’s financial health, allocating resources wisely, and making informed investment decisions.
  13. Customer Focus: A customer-centric approach drives innovation and ensures that the company’s products or services meet customer needs and expectations.
  14. Networking: Building relationships with other industry leaders, investors, and partners can open doors to collaborations, partnerships, and potential growth opportunities.
  15. Long-Term Perspective: A great CEO focuses not only on short-term results but also on building sustainable, long-term growth for the company.

Here’s a challenge…. take each of the above criteria and mark yourself out of 10 for two scores:  firstly, score yourself in terms of your ability; and secondly, on how much time you spend actively applying yourself to the quality or activity described.

Love to hear your thoughts.  And if you would like to be challenged more to improve your ability as a CEO vs Owner Operator… ask me about the Master Moves programme.  There’s one coming up soon….

PS. Book a free 30 minute business chat with with me here.

How to have a win/win financial relationship with your business

A while ago I wrote a blog called ‘your business is not your baby’ where I talked about the importance of treating your business as a separate entity, not as an extension of your family or personal life.

Today in one of the rich and frank Master Moves group discussions, this important distinction came up again.

The conversation came about as a business owner shared that they had been ‘stripping’ money out of the business to fund other projects. Another business owner agreed they had done the same. Which was all well and good until an external factor impacted on revenues, causing an instant and significant drop of income. Then the lack of cash reserves in the business became a problem.

Suddenly he couldn’t pay his contractors on time, and became stressed about their well being as like all business owners, we are always conscious of our responsibility to those who rely on us to make good decisions so they can feed their families and pay their mortgages.

So is it wrong to take the cash out of your business as you go?

My answer is a resounding ‘no’ – it’s not only not wrong but it is important that you do so.  Why would you wait until the end and hope you get your ROI on all your efforts from a sale?  When you can be taking money out as you go and investing it elsewhere, thereby growing your wealth outside of the business at the same time you are growing the business.

But it is critical to do it strategically and in a way that makes your relationship with the business very clear and works for the business as well as you.

Here’s what I shared about how my business was set up and how I learned to have an appropriate relationship with it.

Your business is a separate financial entity and as such needs to stand on its own two feet.  It needs to raise it’s own finance when needed.

It has a responsibility to make enough profit to be able to pay dividends to its shareholders, to give them a fair return on their investment.

It is the job of the CEO to ensure the business performs well for its customers, its staff, its community and also its shareholders.

As the owner, you are the shareholder.

But as an owner operator working in the business you are also the CEO.

It’s good to remember you have two hats – The CEO and the shareholder.

As a shareholder you have every right to expect a dividend paid out of profits

But only if as a CEO you have met the targets and expectations of the business to ensure there is enough capital to do three things:

    1. Allocate a reasonable % of profits to be working capital left in the business for growth and risk management
    2. Allocate a % of profits for profit share/bonus for the key people who have helped achieve the profit
    3. Allocate a % of profits to be declared as dividend pay out to the shareholders

This is how my business was set up and it worked really well.  I was on a salary paying PAYE, that was all I took out of the business until profits were finalised. Then I would receive the agreed % of profits after a capital allocation was made to fund growth and have reserves for tough times, and after key staff had been given a profit share bonus.

The key to win/win

The key really is to always view your business as a separate entity – your job working inside the business is to make sure it’s financially successful so that it can pay you a return that you can use outside of the business.

Take money out yes.  But leave enough money in to feed the business when it needs it… and this my friends is a win/win for you and your business.

I hope that makes sense!

PS. Conversations like this happen all the time in the Master Moves community.  To find out how to join us, hit reply to this email and I’ll fill you in!

Master Moves is a powerful group programme for business owners who really don’t want to keep playing the game alone.  Find out more here. 

Why bother with a company vision?

The following is an excerpt from my book, Liber8 your Business…

Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.’ Jack Welch.

I’m sure I’m not the first business mentor or advisor to tell you that every great business needs an inspiring vision. I’m pretty sure this has been in business text books since year dot. But what is this vision thing really all about? And why should you bother having one?

A vision is a common purpose, a reason for being.

For the most practical minded, a company vision may seem a woolly, ‘pie in sky’ kind of ideal that has no bearing on today’s sales. And in some ways this is true. A company vision is something that exists well into the future and will most likely never be realised. However, it plays a critical role in your business success.

First, a vision will inspire people. Your vision is not what you do; it’s the reason your business exists and how it makes a difference. Perhaps you’ll remember earlier in the book I wrote of the two reasons for being in business. The first was to make money (and hopefully you are on board with this idea by now!).

The second was to make a difference. A business that sets out to change something is a business with a purpose. And a business with a purpose is one that propels forward, gathers speed and brings people along for the ride … people who care about the same purpose and want to make that change too. The people who work for you, the clients you attract and, ultimately, the buyer who pays your asking price can all be inspired by your vision.

Your desire to change something significant can be a powerful motivator. This change can be within your own industry, if you can see better ways of doing things that will transform the way your industry operates. It could be a difference made to your community, your city, your country or on a global scale.

Your vision allows you to aim for a clear point of difference

A well-considered company vision can also stamp your mark on your industry in a way your competitors may not have thought of. My vision for Red Rocks was to ‘transform the way advertising agencies treated their clients’. I had spent my entire working life in an agency, most of this as a creative person. My experience told me advertising agencies treated their clients with almost a level of distain. The client was a pain to be tolerated on the road to a creative award and was quite literally a meal ticket, needed to cover the costs of excessive long lunches. The agency would take the client’s brief and disappear for several weeks while they worked on the big idea. As a copywriter I was mostly kept away from the client and had to rely on the brief from the client service person (or ‘suit’ as the industry nicknamed such roles).

There was, in my view, a big disconnect between the clients, who had all the industry knowledge, and the creative people who came up with the clever ideas. Surely we should all work together to get the best solution? I hated the arrogance that seemed to go with my own industry and the way clients were kept in the cold. When I started my own agency, it was with a vision to change this … and make a difference to the industry that would live beyond my own tenure as the agency owner. The vision had our clients’ best interests at heart and we made sure we used this to our advantage when pitching against our larger competitors. Did we point out the arrogance that bothered me? Of course we did, and positioned ourselves as the opposite. On many occasions it worked extremely well for us.

 ‘You’ll find what you love by observing what you hate.’

Robert Kiyosaki said the above words to me as we had dinner one night during his Business School for Entrepreneurs workshops in Hawaii. I’ve never forgotten them, nor stopped admiring the work Robert and Kim do to this day to make their difference in the world. If you take a look at Robert’s website www.richdad.com you’ll see his vision on the home page:‘Elevating the financial well-being of humanity.’ It’s a vision that flows directly from his hatred of poverty and the terrible impact it has on people.

If you can find something that frustrates you and others, you can steer your vision towards fixing it. Our vision for our pet care company was ‘to make the world a happier place for pets.’ This was clearly a global vision and one inspired not only by our love of pets but also by our hatred for any kind of animal cruelty.

Though our core business was walking dogs and feeding cats, we saw our role in the world to be much bigger than this. We envisioned ‘an army of Pet Angels across the globe,’ all committed to making a difference. Our vision enabled us to think and act on a much bigger scale than our core services. We became involved with raising funds for our local animal shelter, petitioning for more dog lighting in dog exercise areas, creating pet first aid and emergency training guides, teaching pet handling safety in schools.

Everything we did was measured against our vision and enabled us to keep asking ‘will this help make the world a happier place for pets?’ As a result of these activities, we often found ourselves in the newspapers, or being asked to comment on important pet related issues. We had a voice bigger than our services, and we championed a cause that many people could get behind.

Think beyond your own lifetime as owner

From a CEO point of view, your role is to keep focus on the vision to drive the business. Your company vision is ultimately what unites your people around a common purpose that goes beyond the money. It’s about doing something you love and wanting to change the world. Its most important role is to inspire.

My vision for my work with Liber8 Your Business and other Liber8me tools and programmes is ‘to set all small business owners financially free.’ Of course this vision will never be achieved in my lifetime, but by making this my ideal I am clear that everything produced under the Liber8 brand must increase the chance of this vision happening. There are millions of small business owners in the world, so whatever Liber8me does must be accessible to as many as possible. This vision inspires me and those I work with to keep thinking of more ways to bring the Liber8me message to business owners everywhere.

The Pet Angels vision ‘to make the world a happier place for pets’ was an ideal my business partner and I loved and felt inspired by. We never intended that it be measurable or even achievable. How could we ever know if we really did make the world a happier place for pets?

This is the key difference between a company vision and your business goals. Your target and goals are there to be achieved within clearly defined timeframes. Your company vision, however, is there to inspire, not be measured. Most company visions are created to have a life beyond that of the original owner.

Another of my business super heroes, the late Anita Roddick, created a global empire around her anger about the way human beings treat the planet and other animals. I love this quote from her about her vision for her business”

I just want The Body Shop to be the best, most breathlessly exciting company – and one that changes the way business is carried out. That is my vision.’

Anita wanted to change the way ‘business is carried out’ by demonstrating that business can have high ethics, values and a greater cause behind everything her company did. In her lifetime she may not have changed the ethics of every business on the planet, but she certainly demonstrated how a business can combine financial returns whilst championing a cause for good.

Guess the vision

Here’s a quick quiz to demonstrate how some of the global greats approach their visions. See if you can match these vision statements with their companies:

Vision Company
1.     To bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete in the world A.     Walt Disney Corp.
2.     To refresh the world B.     IKEA
3.     To make people happy C.     Walmart
4.     To create a better everyday life for the many D.    Coca cola
5.     To give ordinary folk the chance to buy the same things as rich people E.     Nike

As you can see, none of these visions mentions what the company does or what its targets are. They are all inspirational and totally immeasurable. Did you guess which belonged with which? Here are the answers:

1.E: 2. D; 3. A; 4. B; 5.C

Your vision drives your brand

Later,we’ll look at the importance of having a strong brand to help drive the value of your business. When we further explore the concept of branding you’ll see how important it is to have an empowering vision to guide the values and philosophy of your business. Nike’s vision (‘to bring inspiration and innovation to every athlete’) is an excellent example of how a vision can drive the brand. Whether you are a world class athlete or a humble gym enthusiast, you feel good wearing the latest Nike gear. Its ‘just do it’ attitude stems directly from the vision. You can be inspired to achieve your best, whoever you are.

The following exercise is designed to help you think more about the type of vision you really want for your company. Is it global or local? Is it transformational or inspirational, or both? Give yourself plenty of time to think about this and please don’t be tempted to skip past it. It is such a critical success factor in successful business growth.

 If you’d like a free e book copy of the Liber8 your Business book, email me now at Laura@liber8u.com … I’m giving away free copies for a limited time 😁

Yours in freedom

The Pillars to Successful Business Growth Series. Pillar 2 – Your Business Model.

pillar-of-autumn-1541725-639x979So you have a great product or service. You know there’s a need for it out there, you’ve defined your customers and your market (if not refer to Article 1 in the Pillars To Business Success Series).  You may well have proven just how great your offer is, with consistent sales under the belt. But how much thought have you given to the growth plan for your business?

The true value in your business will ultimately come not just from what you sell, but also how well you grow.

To grow well, you need to think about your business model, sooner rather than later.

There are two key questions to ask yourself when thinking about your business model:

  1. What is the potential for this business in the future (what is your vision for where you are taking it)?
  2. How will it scale?

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Let’s look at each in turn.

What is the potential for your business?

When I’m working with new clients, we spend a fair bit of time considering this question. We look at what you personally might want out of the business financially, the size of the market you are in, the competition you are up against, your future portfolio of customers – in terms of both size and value.  We consider what you are offering now and who you are offering this to, and how this might need to change over time to enable the true potential of the business.  We build a picture of what’s possible for the future, check in with your appetite for growth and your commitment to make this happen.

How will it scale?

When we have a clear picture of what’s possible, we look at the business growth plan that will enable this.  How and what is your business currently set up to deliver? How will it need to be set up in the future to enable the size and scale of business you are hoping to build? What changes do you need to make to ensure this growth can happen?  Will you be expanding into new markets? Do you need to make changes to the product or service itself? What team infrastructure is required to support the growth? What needs to happen to the way you make and deliver your product service? How can you reduce dependency on you and other key people, with systems, technology, team and training? We also look at the time frame over which these changes need to take place.  If your vision for future success is five years out, you don’t need to make all the changes necessary right now.  You can map them out over time and determine what you need to be working on right now to ensure you are preparing for growth in the future.

As you can see, there are a lot of questions to consider. Business is really a thinking game, and a planning game as well as a doing game. To be a good business person you need to think about strategy as well as delivery.

Here’s a definition of strategy taken from a well-known dictionary:

Strategy: A method or plan chosen to bring about a desired future, such as achievement of a goal or solution to a problem.

The question is always, are you willing to do the thinking necessary to plan for a successful future? Or are you always going to be too busy delivering your product or service today?

My job as a mentor is to ensure my clients have the structure, support and guidance to do the hard thinking now that will set them up for the future.

If you think you might be ready for this … email me at laura@liber8u.com to find out more about my programmes.

Happy growing!

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PS.  For more thoughts on how to make your business more valuable, feel free to download this free booklet, based on my interviews with successful entrepreneurs

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The 2 critical factors to business growth that no one else talks about…

tiger kittenIn recent months my business partner, Mike Brunel*, and I have been helping a number of small business owners overcome their blocks to business growth. And as we dig deeper into what it really takes to grow a business, we have had an epiphany that we’d like to share with you…

There are 2 critical factors to business success that NO ONE talks about.

And in our view, it’s time this changed… because if you understand these 2 factors and embrace them in your business …. You WILL SUCCEED and you can grow an EXTRAORDINARY business.

So what are they then, these 2 secret factors? Let us share them with you…

  1. Mindset. The first factor involves your appetite for growth in the first place. How big are you really willing to grow? What limitations are you putting on your business before it even gets started? Have you even thought about the true potential for your business? What are your attitudes to wealth? What is your relationship with money? Are you sitting inside a comfort zone that is restricting the potential of your business? As the Liber8 team investigates these questions with our clients, we are witnessing huge mindset shifts that enabling growth that simply didn’t exist before.
  2. Model. Once you adopt what we call the ‘growth mindset’, the next critical success factor is your business model. Do you have a model that is capable of growth? Where is your current model restricting growth? How can you re-engineer it to be less dependent on you and more scalable? Is your offering positioned to take advantage of the largest market open to you? Have you thought about the model underpinning your business? Have you explored the potential you are sitting on?

Until you address these two critical factors, it doesn’t matter how many courses you attend, or what tricks you learn… you remain in danger of standing in the way of your business’ true potential. You won’t see the shift from ordinary to EXTRAORDINARY until you step outside of your comfort zone and explore what’s truly possible.

The Liber8 team are building Mindset & Model into all our materials – programmes and products – from now on. We’ll keep you informed on how you can take on the challenge to allow your business to be EXTRAORDINARY.

Be prepared for significant break throughs!

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Mike Photo JB* Meet Liber8 Mentor, Mike Brunel. Like me, Mike has successfully built and sold a business. Unlike me, Mike’s business was global – with offices all over the world. Like me (and every other successful entrepreneur I’ve ever interviewed), Mike had humble beginnings. He began as a sheep shearer and then door-to door salesman. I began as secretary. We both built successful business. But we are neither one of us trained business people. The Liber8 motto is “if we can do it, anyone can do it!”.  We hope you’ll be joining us on Liber8 programmes soon.