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Katherine Ann Byam 0:03
Becoming the CEO.
It really fascinates me how much reference we place in titles, it seems they are woven into the fabric of the story, we tell ourselves every day about our accomplishments, or what is what we're entitled to. But the titles truly serve us, or more importantly, help us to become better servant leaders?
This is the question that I put to myself today on this episode. Servant leadership came into my vernacular in 2016. When I returned to regular work, after my sabbatical year, it was all the rage, and certainly everyone talked about it. But quickly, it was clear that too many artefacts to an old world existed in our structures, which made servant leadership hard to digest.
For example, the parking privilege of the heads of function, or the titles that they have stored, or the frameworks that we had for decision making. Most of the artefacts supported a pre-existing world, as much as we tried to become better servant leaders to our teams. When I started my business, I immediately promoted myself to the CEO, I was the only employee on record. But I immediately wanted to step up into my role of shaping the business in the likeness of a strong and connected thought leader. I'll tell you what, though, the trouble is that although it's not impossible, it's very, very difficult to step into a true place of leadership, when you are also the lady simultaneously driving the bus, handing out the flyers, serving the drinks, checking the tab, and trying to figure out the best way to minimise waste, recycle, or build a circular business model from your business. There's a lot that we have to digest and figure out when we're leading businesses that offer a modern age, when you're trying to operate within the heart of the doughnut, or let's say the green ring of the donut that keeps rearward speaks about in her work on donut economics, you have a lot to consider beyond just the team, the business fundamentals, but you also have to consider your impact. And the doughnut philosophy is, is pretty much this, that there's a sort of social foundation that we can't drop beneath. So we can't get into the hole of the middle of the doughnut, because that's where the social foundation doesn't exist. They're basic necessities that don't exist for some people. And then we have an ecological ceiling, a boundary to the donut that we kind of go beyond. So this is where you have climate change, ozone layer depletion, ocean acidification, chemical pollution, nitrogen, freshwater withdrawals, land conversion, biodiversity loss, and air pollution, among other things. So the idea when you're designing your business is to design to stay within this lovely green band, which is considered the social ingest space for humanity. But taking that on as a single intrapreneur, trying to create that framework while trying to save yourself. So often pretty difficult, right. And the essential thing that we need to do first is make sure that our business stands on good foundation of itself, almost before we can pull anyone else from outside of that ring. Or we can design our business models to simultaneously pull ourselves and others out of the middle of that circle. So this is a lot to think about. And definitely it's a challenge for many of us building our businesses today. The CEO mindset therefore starts with building a great support team. And nowadays I'm calling it a hybrid team, with people automation and great slick systems, as well as building a fit for purpose business model. Now, when you're building a team, it seems scary at first. What if I have a poor month and then another poor month? What responsibility Am I taking for someone else's income? If you're thinking like that, this is a good thing. It means you understand the stakes, it means you understand what it means to be inside that circle. But the B track to that soundtrack in your head is how do you hire so that the additional headcount that you bring in so the people you decide to lift up or expense that you take on unlocks more capacity to expand the reach of your business? If you're a solopreneur, your first hire can be among perhaps three key roles, or possibly all of them, if you are able to afford it. So the first is an operations expert to help you set up the right automated and technical solutions in your business. If these are not already in place, then you have virtual assistant, so someone to help manage your time and your diary. And then you can choose from another three sets. Depending on your ability to afford them, perhaps you can do all of them, or perhaps just one. But the three that I'm talking about are a social media manager, who takes the load off the organic lead generation and your business, an ads manager if you prefer to use ads, rather than organic traction. And that person can also take some weight off the lead generation activity, or a PR manager or a team who writes content for you to be featured in press and other media. So all of these are all of these activities are needed to help grow and scale your business. It's up to you to decide what balance you want to inject into your team, and what fits with your business best, what fits the interest and the need and the design of your business model best as well. Other hires would considering an associate or an understudy, who can start delivering some of the more routine aspects of what you do. And this can potentially overlap with your operations manager depending on the skills required. You may also want to consider an accountant. That's a hugely for many business owners, knowing that someone competent is looking after their books, and preparing financial statements, things that you're going to rely on in your business. You can also think about a business development manager to look at bigger contracts, collaborations and partnerships going out there to strategically make connections for you and your business. If you're scaling, you need to be mindful of the bandwidth you have for your business. And as such, you may need to look at your service model. For example, perhaps you might need to add more group services rather than one to one services. Or you need to bring up that team of understudies to be able to provide some of that one to one basis so that you only provide the absolute bit that you need to provide it giving some of the more routine aspects to that understudy.
Price also becomes a consideration if you only have so much capacity to scale your service in terms of hours. But most of all, as you scale, you need to consider that your impact is becoming more we talk about growth. And we know that cannot be infinite growth in a finite world. However, when we talk about growth, sustainable businesses, we're really talking about untapped capacity, untapped demand, we're also talking about sort of head on competition with businesses that are operating in a less sustainable way. So in a way, your untapped demand is a latent demand in the market for things that are more sustainable. So if people find things that are more sustainable, they're going to reallocate funds, and allocate them to your product. There is some competition, there is some head on competition that you will be taking on in order to grow. And you need to be aware of that too. That part of your game is going to be competing with businesses that haven't made the transition that haven't made the commitment to lifting people to the right place and to and supporting initiatives for the planet. As you scale and grow your impact. Your advocacy work becomes even more important. The funds you can contribute to helping people escape, the doughnut expands and management of that impact becomes even more important ensuring it's reaching the right people, the contributions you were making to reduce your impact on the outer limits of the doughnut also become more important. And ensuring your growth is neutral or positive for the planet will be essential. In the next episode, we go into the mindset of becoming the leader of your business, and some of the things that can derail you. Before we close However, there are two more important things that we do need to cover when you're building out your scale and your business to grow for the future. And they are legal, and HR. Please don't underestimate the importance of having good legal contracts in place for looking at the right ways to put those contracts in place so that they are fair to both parties. And also looking at the employment law as the employment rules, especially as we move towards more remote working more flexible working employees living in different countries and different jurisdictions from where your business is based. So you do need to get expert support to do those kinds of roles. But the good news is you don't have to hire them full time anymore. So tune in to the next episode to understand the kind of leader you need to become in order to really be able to deliver On these goals that you've set yourself, I'm looking forward to supporting you through this in the next episode with my guest. See you soon. This episode was brought to you today by the Eco business growth Club by Katherine Ann Byam. And by the space where ideas launch. The eco-business growth club supports positive impact SMEs with coaching new health, and community support toward achieving the impact and reach they set out to meet. You can find out more by connecting with where ideas launch on Instagram or following the hashtag where it is launched across all of your social media.