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5 to Thrive: Essentials for a start-up CEO
Hundreds of books and countless business school lectures give start-up companies the roadmap to success. Below are five essentials specifically for the CEO of any start-up. If you want your business to thrive, and not simply to survive, read on.
1. Believe in your mission. Everybody told me to write a business plan, but believing in the mission of my business was just as important. After receiving their diplomas, many graduates at Carnegie Mellon, my alma mater, were headed to Wall Street, while I was headed to an empty start-up office just blocks from campus. Seeing doubt in the eyes of others was challenging, but I was confident in the knowledge that people wanted and needed the information College Prowler could provide. I knew that if we provided true value and were helping people, everything would work out. I learned that believing in my mission was all about believing in myself.
2. The don't always finish the race with the same team you started with.Everybody in a start up should have a delineated role, and be an integral part of the team. It all boils down to pulling your own weight while supporting the overall efforts of the company. When the #2 employee at College Prowler was no longer committed to the team's success, letting them go was clearly the right move for the future of the company. Firing a liability was not difficult in comparison to laying off good employees who were assets to the company. In lean times, every company is forced to lay off team members who are assets, and College Prowler was no exception. It is much harder to lay off a good worker because of cash flow than it is to fire a close associate because of cause. But in both cases, the company's health comes first...
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