When you are running your business in the day-to-day, dodging curve balls and slaying metaphorical fire breathing dragons, this is easy to forget.
When you transition from star consultant or employee to CEO you also transition to being the face of a company. This means that you no longer have a slew of “higher-ups” congratulating you when you do well. Instead you now have competitors trying to push you out of the CEO arena.
If your company does well, you are thrown into the CEO arena which has new rules:
- Your graphic t’s are swapped out for whatever your publicist tells you to wear.
- The happy hour / networking events always involve an Uber because your lawyer (or general counsel) insists upon it.
- A certified accountant asks you for a PNL that they then convert into something that the IRS finds easier to read.
When you make this jump, it is easy to get overwhelmed. Many newly minted CEOs look around them and feel an inaccurate sense of imposters syndrome. They forget about everything that they had achieved to get here and instead retreat to a cubicle back in the corporate world.
I want to give you a short process that will protect you from falling into the pit of misplaced imposters syndrome. So that you can protect yourself against haters like this:
A few years ago, a retired marketer told me that Molo9™ wouldn’t work because I had a grammatical error in the rough draft of my first lead magnet. She said that she would never trust a marketer who makes grammatical mistakes, as she pointed to the grammatical error in the rough draft of my lead magnet. I responded “Well then I guess I’m lucky that Apple didn’t give me a grammar test prior to hiring me to double the sales of their location in northern Italy; and I’m even luckier that my boss overlooked my grammatical errors when he had me document my strategies so that he could replicate them across all SIS locations in Europe. Which Fortune 500 companies have you worked with again?” Her response was silence & my response was to launch the next version of Molo9™.
You may think that it is better not to respond to people like this, but the problem is that when you are the new CEO in the arena, you constantly have to repeat why you deserve a seat at the table. You never know who is listening and what doors will be closed if you do not protect your seat.
You do not need to be aggressive, I was very calm when I said this. But you do need to know your numbers and be ready to calmly rattle them off when someone questions your spot at the table.
This is how you equip yourself with these types of quick & calm rebuttals:
- Take out your resume & highlight every epic achievement listed on there.
- Read over the highlights a few times.
- If listening to motivational music helps, play the song (embedded below) & as you listen to it, recall what you did to achieve each of the highlights on your CV.
After going through the motions of this you’ll find you have developed a new coat of shining armor. Next time you use it in action, send me an email telling me about it, so we can both celebrate.
Have a magical day ✨,
Adi Soozin
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