This blog post has been authored by Stand Out Online Member Kelly O’Neil, Innovate Media Services

There’s a dynamic I see at play a lot in leaders of six, seven, and yes.. even eight figure businesses. The owner or CEO works hard to grow the company. They experience success, and grow to a certain point. But then, the business gets out of control. And most often, the leader herself will spin out: she realizes that she’s not paying herself enough, never has enough free time, or both. Burnout sets in. You can blame burnout and failure to scale peacefully on a lot of things. But when these things rear their ugly heads, the first place I always look is leader identity.

HOW DO YOU IDENTIFY YOURSELF?

Of course, being a leader means you’re ultimately accountable for the success of your company. But what does it mean to be in charge?

For many leaders, it means always taking care of everything: the clients, the team, and everyone else. They’re on overdrive, always making sure everything gets done. Where there’s a fire, they’re there to put it out. This approach works for a while. But sooner or later, the fires get to be too many, too often, and too big. Or, it’s just too much of a grind to keep putting them all out.

Ultimately, the firefighter approach is a roadmap to burnout. And staying in firefighter mode will never let you scale the business in a sustainable way, or in a way that will truly support you in having the lifestyle you desire.

You can’t get out of it by bringing in bigger fire hoses. Instead, you have to change your identity.

You have to promote yourself from Chief Firefighter to CEO.
TREAT YOUR ROLE LIKE YOUR STRATEGY

If you are to meet your company’s goals, anything that does not directly or indirectly support successful implementation of company strategy needs to go. Successful business leaders understand this. And the most successful ones also apply the same principle to their own role. They are as clear about their role as they are about their strategy, and just as dedicated to defending it.

As a business owner or CEO, your job is to work on your business, not in it. You have to be aware of what’s going on in the market and in your company, create a strategy for success, and keep your company aligned with that strategy. Anything that distracts you from those activities will only serve to sabotage your strategic advantage. If you are rushing around putting out fires in your business, you’re not doing your job—and your results will suffer.

In other words, if you’re going to step into your rightful role as CEO, you have to stop doing everything else. That means you have to leave those responsibilities to other people. Which, of course, means getting good at hiring and managing your executive team.

There is an art to building a team that will support you in your role as CEO rather than adding fuel to the fire. I could speak for days on this topic, but for now here are a few of my best tips to help you get started.

6 TIPS FOR BUILDING A ROCKSTAR TEAM THAT WILL SUPPORT YOUR RISE TO CEO

1. Look Beyond Skillsets. Will you hire based on background and skill or do you hire based on aptitude and attitude? In my experience, both are important, but if I had to choose one or the other I’d choose aptitude and attitude hands down. Before you hire, it’s a good idea to get very clear on the culture you want to create, and only hire people who are a clear fit for that culture.

2. Put the Right Person in the Right Place. Be aware that personality is often more indicative than skillset of how well a person will do in a role. I have every applicant take my proprietary Profit-preneur Assessment (which I’ve made freely available online) to exactly identify their key strengths, their profits accelerators and their profit leaks. So for example, if I am hiring for a role that requires a lot of attention to detail, there are certain personality types I look for and others that I avoid for that role. I find that a lot of poor hiring decisions can be avoided if we vet people in advance so that we understand how they operate. Keep in mind, too, that just because a person isn’t a good fit for a particular role doesn’t mean there’s no place for them on your team. The innovator type who bombs out as a personal assistant may be just the genius you need on your marketing team.

3. Delegate Results, Not Tasks. I don’t delegate tasks to my team. I delegate responsibilities and outcomes. I hire people and create a culture that allows them—entices them, even— to be free thinkers, people who can look at a task and say, “I have a better way to do this. I was researching this and this is what I think we should do instead.” It becomes a whole different ball game when you start hiring that way. Now you’ve got a team that will put out the sparks before they have a chance to become fires, and who will handle fires themselves instead of handing them over to you.

4. Consider ROI. The conventional mindset always comes up with, “Can I afford that?” A better question may be, “Can I afford not to hire?” Whether filling a given position will support growth depends a lot of where your business is at the moment. For instance, a “do-er” position will only make you more money if you have the clientele to keep them busy. On the other hand, hiring for a “growth” position—such as sales or marketing—may not help your company if you are already working to capacity. If you are an overworked CEO, sometimes the best hiring decision you can make is to hire an admin, because if you are trying to grow your company and you’re still doing admin work, you’re in the slow lane. That $20 per hour admin could leverage into literally millions of dollars of profit if they free up your time for strategic matters. Your life will change when you start looking at the people you’re bringing on your team as revenue generators, not expenses.

5. Anticipate Your Hiring Needs. Back in the day, I would wait to hire until I needed someone yesterday. You can’t make good decisions when you’re in that head space. Now, I always have this wish-list of who my next employee is going to be, and I’m aware of the milestones of when I’m going to need her. You may not be able to pin it down to a particular month of the year, but knowing that, for instance, when you have taken on a certain number of clients you’ll need to hire another person can help you anticipate your needs. It’s okay to have a job posting up for months. Putting the feelers out early allow you to be highly selective and hold out for the right person. That said, if d the absolute perfect person comes through your door and you weren’t planning on hiring them for two more months, you’re not going to lose by hiring on the spot. If she’s amazing, she’s going to become a revenue generator, not an expense.

6. Rejuvenate to Accelerate. One of the biggest things you need to do as CEO is to fill your own well so you can be the most effective leader possible for your team and clients. If you aren’t physically, mentally, and emotionally recharging, it is costing you a ton of money. Sleep studies show that even just one hour less than optimal sleep per night will, over time, result in serious cognitive impairment. The cost of this in lost revenue and opportunity are potentially staggering.

As CEO you absolutely need a team that can the task load off your shoulders so you can focus on being the best leader of your company that you can be. This includes personal as well as business tasks. For many CEOs, having a personal assistant is not a luxury. It is a necessity, because cramming your weekend or off hours full of personal errands and “catch-up tasks” absolutely will affect your performance during the week.

CHANGING MINDSETS, CHANGING ROLES

If you are like many of the clients I’ve worked with, you are probably all over that org chart. It can be really hard to figure out where to start making the changes you need to make. Should you hire somebody for marketing? For business growth? For finance? Where do you start letting go? And how?

If you’ve been putting out fires for a long time, it can be very challenging to make the mindset shifts necessary to let go and delegate. In addition, your shifting mindset will inevitably cascade through your organization and require everyone else in your company to shift their mindset, too. You can expect challenges during this time. But keep in mind that once you’ve succeeded in creating a culture and building the right team to support you in your new role as CEO, you’ll have positioned yourself for greater success—and more personal fulfillment—than you’ve ever imagined.

Kelly O’Neil is a multi-award winning entrepreneur, affluent marketing and brand-marketing expert for the next generation of innovative companies and thought leaders.

As a highly successful marketing consultant for service-based businesses, Kelly knows exactly what it takes to exit a recession stronger than when you entered it. Her ability to tap into and understand the affluent mindset has made Kelly America’s leading expert in selling to the millionaire market.**

She has been featured in Entrepreneur Magazine, Wall Street Journal, Fortune, Forbes, NBC, and Huffington Post among others! Kelly is a best-selling author, has shared the stage with industry legends including Tim Ferris, Jack Canfield and Brian Tracey, and was named by Seth Godin as “One of the Most Innovative Companies in America.”