You, the CEO: Embracing the entrepreneurial leadership model

We’ve come a long way together, we share the same issues, and we take up the same challenges every day. This chapter is more personal. It is dedicated to us.

The Entrepreneur-CEO vs. The Corporate CEO

The entrepreneur-CEO is not a classic leader. Managing a multina-
tional is radically different from managing a scalable business. While

there are numerous books on leadership and management of large

organizations, there is little clear guidance on the mission, expectations, day-to-day activities, and metrics pertaining to the entrepreneur-CEO of a small company.

Most management books divide the functions of the CEO asfollows:

• Direct (lead a team)
• Direction (take a strategic direction)
• Directives ((give operational directives)

In absolute terms, these functions are a good illustration of the three areas in which every manager must excel: human management, strategic planning, and operational execution. But, in the case of a small growing company, do we really expect the leader to ONLY plan the strategy, lead a few close lieutenants, and give orders as in a multinational?

The answer is no.

The Chief Doer Officer

You and I have a completely different role than the professional managers employed by big companies. As builder entrepreneurs, we’ve been used to playing the role of Chief Doer Officer, the one who does everything. Sales, product, project management, budgets, contracts, marketing. Everything. In times of scale, we realize that this method of working is no longer sustainable and may even be totally counterproductive.

First of all, a team of tens or even hundreds of people cannot be managed like a group of a few mercenary-artisans. Secondly, at this stage, at least one management layer stands between us and the people producing the product. Finally, our involvement in each client project would only slow down the machine.

In this case, which model should you pivot to?

Is there a compromise, a management model that isn’t too far removed from the teams and clients without remaining in the hands-on mode that characterizes us?

A Leadership Model Rooted in Ancient Wisdom

I suggest we dive into the bible here. Strange? Not really. The bible is full of leadership lessons. One of them is specifically about the leader-entrepreneur of one of the most entrepreneurial projects of antiquity. We are (presumably) in the thirteenth century BCE. Our man is entrusted with the delicate mission of establishing a spiritual ecosystem in the world at that time. Thus, in the middle of the desert, began the construction of the Tabernacle. The drivers and progress of this project are very similar to those of a startup: a vision was defined, two fundraising events were organized, and the scope of work was detailed at length. The functionality of each element of the Tabernacle and the dimensions of each of its walls were specified.

Everything was ready.

Only the project manager was missing. In other words, the entre-preneur.

One might expect Moses to take the reins at the construction site. But he wasn’t the perfect candidate for this mission. His primary contribution was to provide a strategic vision. His talents were inadequate to manage this specific project.

Now, Moses had a brother who excelled in the field of operations. Aharon had long been responsible for infrastructure dedicated to the people and was already managing the strategic projects defined by Moses. Why not appoint him CEO of the company “Tabernacle?” Inadequate, says the text.

OK. Third try, how about Jethro? He was the best strategic consultant of the time! Like an ancient McKinsey, he advised Moses and recommended a more fluid management organization chart. Is this problem-solving expert the right profile? No, because problem-solving alone is not enough to build a sustainable venture.

Who is ultimately chosen to lead this noble enterprise? Bezalel. Bezalel comes from the tribe of Judah (Exodus 35:31) and possesses the five essential qualities of the CEO entrepreneur:

1. Problem-solving skills– Overcoming daily obstacles.
2. Good listening skills – Understanding both customers and employees.
3. Perspective – Maintaining a long-term vision.
4. Creativity – Innovating continuously.
5. Leadership – Coaching and empowering teams.

The first quality makes it possible to solve the multitude of daily problems inherent in any entrepreneurial project. The second, the ability to listen, is essential for meeting customer expectations. Plus, listening to employees creates an ideal work environment, free of obstacles to internal processes. The third quality highlighted in the Bible is also vital. A sense of perspective makes it possible to manage projects lasting twelve to thirty-six months and helps when making sometimes counter-intuitive decisions that serve the long-term plan.

Note that these three characteristics are also attributed to other biblical characters, including King Solomon.

But Bezalel is the only one with the fourth necessary quality, creativity. “He is able to invent, to think new thoughts” (Exodus 35:32). What good is the ability to listen to customers and understand the market if we can’t devise suitable and disruptive solutions? Don’t forget that large companies like Nokia and Kodak have gone under through sheer inertia. At our level, do we have the luxury of falling asleep without trying to reinvent ourselves? Of course not! We must constantly promote and lead product disruption and process inventiveness…

That leaves leadership. More precisely, educational leadership (Exodus 35:34). We must continuously coach our team members to help them progress and develop their skills. Bill Campbell, legendary coach of the most successful Silicon Valley entrepreneurs (Steve Jobs, Sheryl Sandberg, and Larry Page), liked to repeat the importance of this activity. Did he know that overwhelmed by the daily grind, we would neglect the human side of our mission?

The Five Core Activities of an Entrepreneur-CEO

So, here’s the recommendation I’d like to pass on to you. As CEO entrepreneurs, we need to focus on five core activities, precisely modeled on the five qualities of Bezalel. There are others, of course, but I am convinced that these are the most important and must shape our days because they correspond to the standard mission of an entrepreneur in times of scale: to win over customers and lead a team.

Do you want to know how to fit these five core activities into your day? Here’s the ideal schedule for a typical day.

1. 9:00 A.M. – 10:00 A.M.: Boost Your Employees

• 9:00 A.M. – 9:10 A.M: Each day begins with a daily Scrum (see Chapter 17). During this daily Scrum, everyone takes responsibility and commits to a clear and measurable daily goal. It’s likely that some blockers will come up during the discussion, which you will have to address. Note them carefully. You’ll come back to them later in the day.
• 9:30 A.M. – 10:00 A.M: After this alignment session with all your direct reports, you’ll follow up with specific team meetings. Each day has its own topic. For example, Monday is dedicated to sales, Tuesday to project management, Wednesday to production, Thursday to customer retention, Friday to marketing. During this weekly session of about thirty minutes, the manager of the department in question shares the results of the past week, the measurable objectives for the week to come, and the actions taken to achieve them. Each team has a tracking format that we’ll return to in the next chapter.

Note #1: Devoting the first part of our day to others is certainly not natural. We have our own considerable workload! But it’s still our job. It’ll also bring you great benefits on the operational level. Your teams will feel energized in the morning and will quickly focus on what they need to accomplish. They will finally move forward without being blocked or waiting for a decision from you that is slow in coming. Ultimately, you’ll save precious time each week, and even more in collective productivity.

Key qualities: Human leadership, performance leadership.

2. 10:00 A.M. – 12:00 P.M.: Create Solutions

Remember Bezalel’s unique quality! Creativity!

The morning should be devoted to proactive tasks. Don’t waste your brain’s positive disposition by answering dozens of emails at this hour. Instead, spend your time imagining and implementing solutions that will help you meet your clients’ present and future needs. Customers first!

Creating unique solutions for a big sale, streamlining a delivery process to go faster, setting up a scalable mechanism to support rapid growth? Now is the time!

In the medium term, some existing customers will also ask you for certain services and features that you don’t yet offer. It’s your responsibility to get them off the ground. To move mountains…

Note #2: It’s tempting to delegate this responsibility to a so-called Head of Innovation, doing who knows what. But you know what I think? This is your job!

Key quality: Creativity.

3. 12:00 P.M. – 1:00 P.M.: Execute a Strategic Plan

A CEO is meant to prepare for the future. If you were only there to manage the operational side of the business and take care of the quarterly results, we wouldn’t really need you. For these things, an efficient Chief of Operations and a robust VP of Sales would be enough.

Our mission is to address today the strategic projects that will generate results the day after tomorrow. Do you want to reach a specific sales figure within a year? You need to spend time on recruiting now. Do you want to double the number of leads in six months? Implement the necessary tools without delay. Are you planning to launch a new service before next year? If you don’t spend a few hours on it this week, it isn’t likely to happen. If you don’t spend a minimum amount of time up front, don’t be surprised if the implementation of your strategic projects is significantly delayed. In other words, you must overcome the terror of the emergency and move on with the long term goals and what’s really important.

Question: What roadblock have you neglected for too long already? [These are big projects or goals that you set at the beginning of the year. Yet somehow some of them are always forgotten in the day-to-day grind.]

Key quality: perspective, composure, and clairvoyance.

4. 2:00 P.M. – 4:00 P.M.: Listen to Customers and Employees

If our mission as an entrepreneur-CEO is to win customers and lead the team, it goes without saying that, of all our activities, the most important is listening.

Listening to customers is crucial. Interacting with prospects allows you to refine your product-market fit. Interacting with customers allows you to anticipate future market demands. Smug managers who hide behind their desks lose this unique advantage, which is crucial to acting and reacting more quickly.

So don’t hesitate to accompany your salespeople on a few meetings with prospects, or even when they conduct retention workshops with existing customers. Not to take charge of everything, but to listen. Stay close to the field.

Listening to your employees is just as essential. There’s no sophisticated management theory on this subject, just one simple action, often tested by commandos, athletes, and business teams. I recommend spending fifteen minutes each day meeting with a different person in your organization. Ask these three questions:

• How would you rate your level of fulfillment, between 0 and 100%?
• What can we do to improve this?
• What do you think is THE organizational problem that needs to be solved to create an even more efficient work environment?

These valuable conversations will allow you to make an extremely clear checklist of the improvements needed. In this way, you’ll fulfill your role on a human level by striving to put in place all the conditions necessary for the personal development of those who follow you day after day. On an organizational level, when your team members notice certain things that escape you, there’s nothing better than for them to inform you directly about these dysfunctions.

Key quality: listening

5. 4:00 P.M. – 6:00 P.M.: Solve Problems

In general, CEO’s who are able to clearly define their mission are very successful in this role. Do you remember what Jack Welch, one of the best managers of the 20th century, said about the CEO’s mission? According to him, it’s divided into three functions: “Chief Meaning Officer” (providing meaning), “Chief Happiness Officer” (creating an ideal environment for employee growth), and “Chief Curling Officer.” Welch was actually borrowing the image from this strange sport, which we tend to skip when watching the Olympics on TV. In curling, the objective is to slide a heavy stone as close as possible to a circular target drawn on the ice. Winning depends mainly on vigorously sweeping the track to make it sufficiently slippery.

We have the same mission: to sweep away the problems that emerge on a daily basis so that our teammates’ stones reach their goals. These can range from a product-related problem to a crisis caused by disagreements within the team. Either way, you need to intervene immediately to prevent things from getting worse.

Note #3: When issues are reported during the daily Scrum, don’t try to solve them immediately. Breathe. And breathe again. You need a few hours of reflection before you act. And anyway, until 2:00 P.M., your time is absolutely devoted to strategy and creating business solutions. Keep calm, you’ll deal with this later in the day.

Key quality: ability to solve problems.

Obviously, the life of a company is dynamic and has its share of unexpected events. The timing of customer appointments is random. Some problems really are urgent and cannot wait. You and I live in the same world.

That’s precisely why I’m sharing this model of an ideal day, structured around the five activities that are most valuable, regardless of when exactly you engage in them. This routine is infinitely more useful, more manageable, and even more varied than being the victim of the daily grind. This is the model that has allowed me to play this hybrid role of entrepreneur-CEO successfully. Want to give it a try?

Measuring Our Performance: The True CEO KPI

The question now is whether you and I are doing our job well… What about our own performance? There’s a very simple way, let’s say an obvious indicator, to measure our performance. Is it revenue?

Definitely not. It’s relatively easy to increase your revenue by increasing the workforce and investing heavily. This is the path chosen by a company that I joined a few years ago. It had added seven new countries to its area of action. Revenue grew by 17%, but the company suffered… a net loss of several million dollars. Not really the kind of result that a CEO can be proud of.

EBIT then?

Not for measuring the efficiency of a company growing exponentially. What should we think of a manager who only thinks about the short term and focuses his actions on resource management alone? I was recently told about measures adopted by the general manager of a large distribution group. Forecasting very slow economic activity in the last quarter of 2020, he had decided to completely halt the organization’s activities (closing warehouses, partial layoffs, ending prospecting activities , stopping new product development). He had certainly improved his quarterly results… but he lost a considerable market share to the benefit of his competitors. Should we really only look at the operating results for the year without taking a long-term strategic view? Cut out the fat, cut expenses that don’t directly serve the value creation cycle. Avoid fixed costs like the devil, of course. But not at the cost of forgetting about the future.

What about the number of customers or users who have adopted your solution?

In B2B, this indicator isn’t always reliable. There are many cases where the increase in earnings per customer (average deal) is well worth a smaller number of users. In 2018, our average deal tripled by applying the techniques described in Part I. Despite a slight decrease in the number of users, our recurring revenue has doubled. Should we try everything to amass small contracts? Is it better to focus our efforts on a niche market in which we could defend much higher prices? In short, the number of users is not always the correct indicator.

However, we need to find this key performance indicator that will allow us to evaluate our own actions before we try to measure the performance of our teams. Right?

This essential KPI is none other than the ARR per person. The increase in recurring revenue is indeed a sign of our ability to build a sustainable business. And, brought down to the individual level (per person), this indicator reflects our ability to optimize individual performance.

Conclusion: a good CEO = an ARR/person in permanent growth. Look at your own results:

1. What was the ARR/person of your company last year?
2. What is it today?

Leading Beyond Yourself

As a bootstrapped entrepreneur, your greatest challenge isn’t just building a product—it’s building a company that can thrive without your constant involvement. By mastering these five activities—Vision, Hiring, Culture, Systems, and Growth—you transition from a doer to a true leader.

The biblical story of Jethro and Moses serves as a timeless reminder: even the most driven leaders must learn to delegate, empower others, and build structures that last. The sooner you embrace this shift, the sooner your business can scale beyond your personal capacity.

So, ask yourself: Are you still the Chief Doer Officer, or are you stepping into your role as the true CEO? The future of your business depends on your answer.

— Lionel Benizri —