Almost everyone has a business that they are doing. In fact, in my street almost everyone owns a small business and they have been doing this business since I was a child and now I am grown into a young lady and their business has reduced or they have changed what they are selling over 100 times. As a child, it got me thinking if it was how all businesses were. I always assumed that the big corporations were companies while these women and men were business men. So I always aimed at owning a company but not a business.
Now I am grown, I am able to differentiate my left from my right, I am able to tell the difference between A and a because one is a capital letter and the other is a small letter. With this, I now understand that both big, medium and small businesses are all businesses and I have been able to understand why these people on my street never scaled their businesses.
They always complain of not having money to run the business, they feed from the business it isn't strong enough to feed itself, they get into loans to be able to purchase goods and have to pay exuberant interest, they do not know how much they are making, they do not have an idea of how much cost they are incurring and they want to manage every penny they have so they never think of employing another person so they can expand and grow. They are just store owners displaying business travesty and it is killing. They do not have a business team, they do not know their finance, they do not have a plan and a system.
First for these set of people to grow, they need to understand that business is not grafting or freelancing. With freelancing, time and expertise is traded for money but they are not under a boss. They deal on contract size, time, and they do it alone because that's what they are; freelancers not business people. You cannot be doing freelancing and call it business because it is not a business.
Getting into business is not being a hobbyist because hobbyist try to start a business without a real plan and their so-called business is ran on passion. They do what they do with no strategy, no financial plan, no direction, but have only passion. Hobbyist are different from small business owners. They own businesses that might be small such as a bakery, a salon, a shop and so on and they do this for a very long time. This is different from an entrepreneur who finds an innovative solution to a need and creates a business around the solution so as to tackle the problem.
Once an entrepreneur stays in a business for over 10 years, running the business and the business is no longer tending to problems via innovation, then the owner is now a business owner and not an entrepreneur anymore. You can become a business owner from the first day once you start a business that already exist. Now that I have explained what a business owner is, who is a CEO.
A CEO can be an employee, an entrepreneur, or a business owner. The role of a CEO is to create a vision, mission, and strategy to ensure his visions and missions happen. A strategy is a map somewhat like a roadmap that you intend to follow squarely with precision. As a CEO, the vision should be communicated to both member of staff and externally so it can be understood and worked on.
As a CEO, it is your job to build a team. Your team doesn't have to be complex but they need to know what they are doing. If you are a CEO without a team, there is no way you are going to be able to achieve whatever you plan to get by yourself. You cannot deliver on your vision and strategy by yourself. If you need a going to scale a business, you need a team. On a final note, as a CEO it is your job to ensure there is always cash available for everything that is to be done in the business.