How To Transition From Day Job To CEO

All right, welcome to another episode of No Fluff, Small Business aside. So what I want to talk about in today's episode is making the transition from day job, employee to self employed CEO, small business owner, right, and this is a transition that a lot of people struggle with for a few different reasons and they, the underlying thing on below all of that the thing under the thing of that is, you're in charge, there's no one else to blame.

There's no one else to look to, right. You are the one driving this forward, you are in charge, and some people don't realize that, but they actually kind of struggle with that, the buck stops here right like you are in charge. So there's about 10 steps I want to go through today that are really going to walk you through the biggest things you want to think about when you're making this or getting ready to make this transition from day job employee to self employed, CEO of your small business, and even if you're thinking, Oh, but I don't want I'm not ready to leave my, my job yet my full time or my part time day job yet, but I still want to step into that CEO role I still want to step into the shoes of I'm a business owner, these 10 steps can still really help you there. So the first one I want to hit on today is, you are going to be the one who is developing, and driving the strategy of your business. You're the boss.

So what do I mean by that: When you are looking at, okay, what should we be prioritizing right where should I be spending my time in terms of what products or services were selling what products or service were promoting the most right what should we be offering should I make a pivot in my business, how should we be talking about it. What you know marketing should we be doing things like that right, Some of those things you're going to end up outsourcing, at some point in your business journey for most people. But the most important thing here is really remembering that you are still going to need to drive the strategy of your business right so you can outsource your social media marketing management, right, that's easy. That's an easy thing that a lot of people start to outsource, but you still need to understand how your social media marketing strategy is going to fit into your overall marketing strategy and how your overall marketing strategy is going to fit into and support your overall business strategy and this is a big shift for a lot of people, you're stepping into that business owner role, and so you need to do that high level strategic thinking to figure out how do all of these pieces of the puzzle fit together to drive this business forward. Right, so if you haven't stopped to think about that. That's something that's going to be really important for you as you step into your CEO role. So, the second point I want to hit on is internal versus external motivations, when you have a job when you have a boss, there's a lot of external motivations there.

Money is an external motivation. But also, I don't want to get in trouble, or I want my boss to tell me I did a good job, or I want to get a promotion. I want to get a raise right, all of those things are external motivators. and while you still will have some of those external motivators in your business right obvious. Money is the easiest thing there. You are going to need to rely on internal motivators, more and more as you grow a successful business right especially once you get your business to a place where the money is coming in really consistently and more money would be nice, sure, but you're not, you know, feeling a squeeze around money at all, you need to really identify what are my internal motivators, what do I really want from this business, what is this business giving to me what am I getting out of this business. Those are going to be your internal motivators and those are so much more powerful than external motivators, because you control them right as the business owner, and being really connected to those internal motivators is going to make you feel more connected to your business, which is gonna make you feel more fulfilled by your business.

So start thinking about what those external and internal motivators are for you in your business right it's not just money but maybe it's the freedom and flexibility to not work as much right to work on other things and spend more time with friends and family right, having that knowledge of being able to only work 15 hours a week, right, that would be more of an internal motivator, and you really want to stay connected to those motivators to keep you moving forward. When you're working hard and you're really focusing or if you're struggling and it's, you know, not as easy as you thought it was going to be being able to connect to those motivators, especially those internal motivations, that's going to make a really big difference for you and that's going to be, what keeps you feeling super fulfilled by your business over the long term. So the third point I want to hit on is prioritization, right, so a lot of times, as employees were told, okay we're going to go focus on this now or okay we're going to go work on this project right we need to focus on this project, you know, management wants us to really focus on this thing this initiative get this initiative out the door right, your tool, to a certain extent, what you should be prioritizing right because your bosses or management are driving that business strategy, and they're communicating or most of the time communicating to you, what your priorities should be based on that higher level business strategy that's not happening anymore.

And what I see, too, that happens to a lot of business owners is they do things that make them feel productive that aren't actually impactful on their business, but they're prioritizing those tasks because either, you know, someone told them they should be focusing on that thing, but it's not actually connected to the overall higher level business strategy, or they're focusing on lower Mo, you know, kind of taskmaster like checking off those boxes in order to feel productive, but it's all tasks that aren't really making a big impact on the business so they're prioritizing the wrong things, you as a business owner, always want to be prioritizing the things that are going to give you the highest return on investment. So that might be a return on investment of budget of, you know, I'm going to invest in hire outsourcing for this thing to get help for this thing right or outsourcing this team member, but return on investment can also be a return on the investment of your time, right. So, if I spend an hour doing this thing a or thing B. What is going to be the most impactful for my business, this thing a going to be the most impactful thing for me to do in my business in the next hour, or is it thing B. And a lot of business owners, lose sight of this and it takes a little bit of self discipline, right, to really sit down and understand what should you be prioritizing based on that higher level business strategy that you have developed, and you are driving as the business owner, and then putting that into the practice every day, whatever day that you're working to make sure that you are focused on the tasks that are going to yield the biggest results for your business, right, or the revenue generating activities that maybe you don't love doing, but you know they're going to have the biggest impact on your business so prioritization is a skill and it's a really important skill that you're going to need to master quickly in order to build and continue to run a successful business.

So the next item on our list is getting out of that 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, mindset. And for a lot of business owners that could look like they swing in the direction of working, a ton, because they're working on their own business now, and they're excited and they feel fired up. Or it could swing the other way where you don't really, you're not really working very much and maybe not working as much as you should work right. Or it's just I sit down at my computer every day and I work from nine to five, and that's what I do, right, the beauty of owning your own business is, you are allowed to decide when you need to work how you need to work how much you need to work right. And so again, thinking about how should I, what is going to have the biggest impact on my business in terms of how I spend my time, right. So that might be getting super clear on your priorities, and knowing I only need to work 10 hours a week. Right. And I know that that is going to help me build a super super successful and impactful business. I don't need to kill myself working 40 5060 hours a week, right, but you need to understand that and you need to know that and make that decision, as the business owner.

So, don't automatically assume you're going to need to work a ton, as somebody who's owns their own business, don't automatically assume that you're barely ever going to work, right, because we need to set up systems and processes and things and documentation around that before we can work less. But also don't assume it's going to look like, oh clock in at nine o clock out at five, Monday through Friday. That's it. Right, it's going to look how it needs to look and how you want it to look and how you need it to look. And so that's really important keep that in mind and be thinking about that when you're designing your days and designing your weeks, because if you don't feel good about working 60 hours a week, that's not going to be sustainable for you, you're going to get burned out and then you're not going to feel fulfilled by your business or as fulfilled by your business because it's causing you to feel burnt out. Right, so that's really important, get out of that 40 hours a week mindset and figure out what works for you and what makes the most sense for your business. Right, so the next thing is understanding your finances.

As a small business owner, you again have to make those strategic business decisions, and that includes decisions around your finances, should you invest in a coach, should you buy that program should you outsource, building your website. Right, do you need to pay for that tool, how much should you be paying yourself. Should you be putting your own money into the business at all. Those are all questions that if you're really not comfortable with money, and you don't have a ton of experience with money. Those are going to be questions that you might avoid as a business owner, to the detriment of your business and this is how people end up not having a sustainable business, or making a ton of sales, but not able to pay themselves because they haven't looked at the numbers in their business, and they're avoiding that right, and as a business owner I really encourage you to get super clear on how much money is coming in, how much money is going out on what, right, and really review that at a minimum of once a month, maybe twice a month, right, to really make sure that's not running away from you and you're super clear on that, right, because for a lot of people who are starting a small business you don't have an unlimited budget, you don't have, you know, investors, right in the beginning. So a lot of people are building businesses, you know, $0 or $200 investment for themselves right they're bootstrapping that initial investment in their business.

And so you need to get super clear on where your money is coming from and where it's going, because that's going to allow you to do financial projections for your business, and understand okay if we take this client on, it's going to increase our expenses by X amount, and our profits going to be this, and you can really start to do some interesting things in terms of modeling, so that you can see your financial projections for 236 months down the road, a year down the road and that's going to allow you to make those strategic business decisions and prioritize what you need to prioritize, to make sure you continue to stay on the right track, right, finances are part of your business strategy. So get comfortable with it now and really pay attention to and keep an eye on those finances, because that can easily be what sticks or swim in terms, in terms of a business success and longevity of a business, right. So the next thing is how can I figure this out. Or how can I get this done developing that type of attitude.

As a business owner, you're going to run into a lot of things that you're like, I have no idea how to do this. How the hell do I figure out how to do it right. But developing an attitude of I don't know how to do this right now, so let me figure out how I can do this or how I can get this done, and being really confident in yourself that you will figure it out. Right. You just need time and you just need to poke around and and figure it out. Right, but that's not a problem. That attitude is. A lot of times the difference between people who talk about starting a business or maybe they just make like you know a little they have like that kind of a side hustle, but it never turns into a larger business that they're running, you know, solely they're able to leave their day job, things like that, because they allow the things that they don't know how to do to really stand in their way. Instead of coming at it from. Okay, I just, I need to do a bit of detective work to figure this out, or I need to figure out, can I pay someone to figure this out, or who already knows how to do this, and then tell me how to do it in the future. Right. And coming at approaching anything not just in your business but in your life with that type of attitude is going to make you so much more productive, as a person and as a business owner, because there's nothing you can't do there's nothing you can't figure out, right, everything is figured out like that. So, really coming at anything from that mindset and being open to learning new things and figuring out those things even if it's something like you don't really care about or you don't really want to do, that's okay.

Figure out how you can get someone else to do that for you instead. Right, but it's how can it get done, and approaching things with that mindset. The next thing is rewarding yourself and this kind of goes back into our internal and external motivators, right, that there's not going to be anyone anymore. That tells you, good job, right like great job on that presentation. Great job on that pitch. Wow, you've really been crushing it lately you've been working, I can see you've been working hard lately, right, and some of you might get that in your day job now and some of you might not as much, but there's not really going to be anyone else to tell give you that pat on the back and say good job, keep it up. You're doing great. Right. So it's really important to make sure that you are doing that for yourself, and that might be just like wow I crushed it today, like I was super productive today I did great work today. I feel really good about myself right. Or it might be setting certain benchmarks and goals, and then when you hit those benchmarks and goals. You have a designated reward for that thing, right. So, if I get all the things on my to do list on, I get to have ice cream later, or I get to watch my favorite show later, or I'm going to take a half day on Friday if I can get all these things done, I'm going to, you know, play hooky on Friday, or it might be that you're gonna book a massage, whatever it is for you whatever you enjoy doing whatever feels like a nice reward and figuring out how and when you can do that for yourself and give yourself that recognition is really important because no one else is going to be doing it for you anymore, it's not going to happen. So a lot of what you do day in and day out is going to go completely unrecognized by anyone else. And that's totally okay that's just kind of part of what it is to be a boss right and to be a business owner, but learning how to make sure you're rewarding yourself can really help you to not start to feel like Wow, it really be nice to get a little recognition sometimes.

The next point we're going to hit on is being confident in your decisions as a business owner and this is something that I see a lot with my coaching clients, especially, but also with some of our clients for the digital marketing agency. And this is where you are allowing your business to be run by committee by people who aren't in your business, right. So this might be the person who read something online or has one conversation with somebody's brother that they've run into that kind of knows maybe what they're talking about. And then that causes them to rethink that entire strategy business strategy that we talked about at the beginning of the episode. Right. It's too many cooks in the kitchen, right, you can hear suggestions you can hear what people are saying, whether that's online right in podcast or whether it's like directly to you about your business, but that doesn't mean that whatever someone says to you, you need to internalize and then extra analyze in the form of okay let me implement this into my business. So learning to be really confident with your decisions as a business owner, is going to help you implement that strategy that you've developed and that you're driving forward, right. And so even in the face of hearing things that are maybe contradictory to what your strategy is, or people disagreeing with you. You could still feel confident that you are making the right decisions for your business. Now, that doesn't mean we're never going to change our minds, we're never going to change anything, right, you're never going to do any sort of feedback or anything right that's not what I'm saying. But what I'm saying is you need to be okay with saying, okay, great, that's something that's feedback that's different than what I've been doing. So I'm going to set that aside over here and I'm going to continue to move on my, on my pathway over in this direction, right, and not allowing it to let you spiral down into, Oh God, I need to rethink my entire business strategy, right, because that's not productive. And that's not going to be a good return on the investment of your time and attention and energy.

So learning to become really confident in your decisions, as the business owner. So the next point we're going to hit on, and we just have two more here so the next one is that we're going to head on is seek out new ways to grow as a business owner, so this is on the other side of that coin. As a business owner, it's always really important to be learning, and to be looking at ways that you could improve the business, right. Should we develop another revenue stream for the business, a different product or service is there a complimentary product or service that we could develop what might that look like, you know what other businesses done. Should we do we need to improve our website or do we need to tighten up our marketing strategy, do we need to increase our prices right how can we do this thing this tool that we use had a big update, how do we implement those things for our business. Should we be running ads for our business right those are all questions that you're probably going to have at some point or another in your business journey, and you should always be looking for opportunities to learn about new things, whether they're kind of directly related to your business or not because you never know how they, you might be able to apply them as a business owner. But again, you're learning new you're always learning new things right, we're always learning new things, but we also are not allowing those new things to give us shiny object syndrome, or to let us spiral into oh god my strategy needs a complete overhaul, Because we're confident in our decisions as a business owner, and in the strategy that we've developed.

So, because we're that confident but we are learning new things we can be a bit more objective when we're deciding when and how and if we want to implement those new things that we are learning like that we're always learning. So that's really important that distinction between those two points there. And then our last point that we're going to hit on is recognizing all that you've accomplished and this goes a little bit back to reward, learning to record yourself. I really encourage you as a business owner to make sure you take time every week or every month, definitely, you know once or twice a year to reflect on everything you've accomplished in that year as a business owner right and even if that was, oh, I tried, we tried to do this one thing we tried to launch this new product, and it kind of flopped it didn't go that great, right, but still recognizing that you tried.

You put forth the effort to try and test launching that new product, right, and looking at, oh I've great like I've worked for myself in this business for a whole year now or like I've been running this business that continues to grow for two years right or I've added $100,000 to my business in less than six months right. Looking back, and recognizing all that you've accomplished as a business owner is, I mean not only fun to do, right, it kind of makes you feel like a badass, but it also really helps, go back to that point of learning to reward yourself, learning to pat yourself on the back right, and it's just so, so important to feel like happy and it goes into that confidence of, Wow, I can do this, because I am doing this look, look at all these things that I've done in the last month or two months or six months right. I am doing it. Could it have been better yeah I will I continue to improve, of course, but look at everything that I've done up until now and so imagine with all the skills and all the new things that I've learned, and all the confidence I've built to myself. Imagine if we did all of that in the last six months, what we can do in the next six months, what we can do in the next year, and it helps you to feel a little bit more excited and a little bit more, you know, kind of pumped about you and about your business and about the life that you're building and your business is allowing you to build, right. So, I hope that these tips for transitioning from day job to CEO were really really helpful, definitely go back through them. If you are thinking about leaving your day job, or you're getting ready to leave your day job or even if you've recently left your day job, right, go through these a little bit because it's just really going to help to set you up for success moving forward.

If you're struggling with any of these things, if you're feeling like you're not stepping into that business owner role definitely look into booking a digital strategy intensive so that we can dig into your overall business strategy and touch on a little bit of these things what you should be prioritizing right what you need to do to understand your finances, all those kinds of things. It's a great way to get my eyes on your business, and see if you are ready or need one on one coaching or what have you. Right, so definitely check out my digital strategy intensive, and it's on my website: SamDiNicolaDigital.com And as always, make sure you leave a review for this podcast every single month, we select a drawing for we do a drawing to select a winner for a free coaching call right so if you're like, oh maybe I want to book a digital strategy intensive, you could book a digital strategy intensive and leave a review and win a free coaching call it's like a twofer one there, right. So if you haven't already, definitely make sure you go, leave a review for the podcast, it is the obviously the cheapest it's free, and the easiest and best way to get my eyes on your business, even if you don't really know if you're just starting your business right what's the harm just go do it. So I hope that you have found this episode, really, really helpful and I will catch you next time on. No Fluff, Small Business Simplified.