Get Rich by Thinking Like a CEO

Ten tips to get to the top

Deep down we are all looking for the secret sauce to become successful. Thanks to The Media and its relentless focus on Celebrity this goal is now well entrenched in our collective psyche. With the likes of Instaglam and FaceTweet pouring Kerosene onto this fire it can seem that everyone out there is getting rich quick and crushing it in their careers.

If we analyse our time spent each day we’ll notice that we going about putting out fires, jumping between email chains to Teams meeting without even pausing to catch breath.

In this short post, we’ll take a step back and explore the somewhat hidden philosophy of CEO’s. It is time to take a look as some of the principles that have taken them to the top of their field can be applied to our own lives. By the end we will have a solid foundation a framework if you will to start thinking about managing your time as (Insert_your_name_here) Enterprises.

Stay focused

If you have time to slack off from your day job to read this, then I’d bet my bottom dollar that you are a knowledge worker (KW). In essence, you are being paid to think. I’ve had a taste of the other side of the coin as a cog in a big highstreet bank (cough) HSBC. Where everything from toiler breaks to grabbing a banana was on the clock, no prizes for guessing which type of role I prefer.

The key to success as a KW is guardian your time and attention. We all have a finite amount of bandwidth each day to focus on high-value tasks. -So get back to work! We have talked before about the dangers of social media so why not save it for the weekends. Some entrepreneurs will even go cold turkey; they’ll ask their assistants to log in to said apps and change their passwords, only to reveal them on Friday night. If you don’t have an assistant yet then a family member could help. I suspect once the faucet is turned off the sweet social media nectar won’t taste so sweet.

As a KW you’ll likely have to spend a chunk of time writing. So practice, even a few hundred words a day will help you with the craft. Tim Ferris suggests journaling first thing in the morning other set goals for the next day last thing before bed. Experiment and find what works for you.

Read- we talked about this at length here. It’s safe to say that 20 mins in bed work wonders for relaxation ;) Consuming quality work may also make you a better writer.

Last up is no email before 11 am. It is so easy to get sucked into someone else’s agenda with misplaced urgency. I read a stat that on average it takes four seconds for us to click on an incoming message. If you get sucked in that can be your limited creative energy lost for the day.

Put your little green men to work

If money is stored LifeEnergy© then you should start utilising all of it that flows into your life. One of the best ways to think about it is to imagine those Dollars, Euros or Yen as workers, staff at your company. You can choose to invest them, make them sweat in the capital markets where if the market goes up (which it always does) they will come back bulked up and with a few friends along to join the growing ranks of your company. Good old compound interest in action again.

If you choose to follow the conventional wisdom, even the Patron Saint of Personal Finance Martin Lewis is guilty of preaching this message and leave them sitting in cash they can become fat and lazy. Remember inflation is real and cash aside from your emergency fund is is an ice sculpture, melting at a party.

So what else can we do? We can always spend the little fellas. The thing to think about here is you can only spend a dollar once and if you can delay impulse purchases even just a week the drive to spend often evaporates.

Like any good boss, it is only right that you conduct regular appraisals on your ‘staff’. I do this by tracking my investment returns and net worth. There is a tonne of Fintech apps out there now that do this or even a basic spreadsheet will get the job done. And if they ain’t performing you can always let them go.

Light a fire under your ass.

The best leaders don’t wait to act. They understand that the default position for a business is to be out of business. It is a dog eat dog with companies pulling all sorts of dirty tricks as they vie for market share. The same is true with the job market, ok maybe no dirty tricks but jobs listed on LinkedIn can easily garner several hundred applications.

Whatever your current role, take small steps and don’t give in. Remember- gradually then suddenly, in a slowly warming room the ice cubes gradually melt. So keep pushing and that thing that feels like a wall might actually be a step.

Work the room

Network. This is a big’un and one which I’ve neglected. There is a misconception that CEOs are locked away in Ivory Towers. Probably some are. But many hedgefund managers make the effort to read the tabloids to spot emerging trends. Others will gladly devote time to speaking at conferences, or on webinars. They realise it is part of their job to be the face of the company.

Here is what Naval Ravikant says on business relationships:

‘’Look at some of the top roles in society, like why someone is a CEO of a public company or managing billions of dollars. It’s because people trust them. They are trusted because the relationships they’ve built and the work they’ve done has compounded. They’ve stuck with the business and shown themselves (in a visible and accountable way) to be high-integrity people.’’

As a budding young (insert career here) a good piece of advice is to reach out to people 5–10 years into the game. It’s likely they will be happy to pass on advice from up the food chain. And they are still new enough to not be disenfranchised !

Take (calculated) risks

This applies to investing as well as your job. I’m sorry to break it to you but there are no stable career paths. The days of putting in your twenty and sailing off into the sunset with a gold watch are over. I guess there is an argument that starting from scratch every few years or as Silicon valley says pivoting- more exciting anyway.

V is for Vision

Still with me? CEOs have vision. They often think five or more years ahead. Their ideas can seem a little crazy because society has yet to catch up. Are we seeing this play out with Bitcoin and Blockchain? Answers on a postcard.

BHAGs

Hand-in-hand with vision are goals. Or more precisely stretch goals. It might be :

-Be financially free by thirty

-Build an AIM listed company

-Donate 25% of your income to charity.

Jim Collins Author of Good to Great, talks about setting BHAGs Big Hairy Audacious Goals. The thing about these targets is that you likely won’t hit them but as Kanye says ‘Shoot for the stars, so if you fall you land on a cloud’.

Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn

Don’t be afraid to fail. This is something Andrew the founder of Listen Money Matters talks about in Learn How to Start a Blog That Earns over $400k a year. In the article he goes onto explain that stubbornness was key ‘you keep trying until everyone else gives up’.

Look after the asset

You are no use to anyone if you are burnt-out. Been there and got that T-Shirt. The formula is optimise good habits around diet, sleep and exercise each day and great things will start to happen.

Build a lasting legacy

Only you will know what that looks like. Maybe it is about ensuring financial security for your grandkids grandkids, or building the next Fortune 500 firm. We only get a few short years here so make them count.

Remember CEOs are fundamentally no different from us regular folk despite being lionised or vilified in the media they understand their limits and slowly build a team around them.