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Founders often find themselves isolated and alone.
You have to make multiple decisions all the time, because there are so many fires you need to put out on a daily basis, and you find it hard to keep your sanity. It’s common to feel depressed – for example, when your star programmer leaves for a higher paying job; or your investor refuses to give you a bridge round or your customers refuse to pay their bills.
On some days, everything which can go wrong goes wrong, and you feel the whole world is conspiring against you.
This is one of the reasons why a lot of founders try to find a co-founder so that they can help and support each other. However, this can make matters worse, especially when you don’t see eye-to-eye!
Loneliness – Scale Killer
This isolation is one of the reasons many founders find it difficult to scale up. They are so caught up in handling the daily nitty-gritty of their business that they don’t have the bandwidth to think about what the next steps to grow the business are.
This is why founders need to implement processes and systems so that you’re no longer working in your business, and can start working on growing your business.
The trick is to make yourself as dispensable as possible. As a founder- CEO you are forced to wear many hats. You need to manage your employees; balance the accounts; order supplies; sell your product; find new customers and raise funds.
Initially a CEO does everything. The next step is to find people who will do those individual jobs for you far better than you can. This will include all the daily mundane tasks a business needs to tackle, such as developing your product; selling it; and taking care of your customers, so that you can then focus on growing your business.
It’s helpful to find a coach or a mentor who can help you to grow. You need someone whom you’re answerable to – someone who will hold you accountable, and who will help you look at the big picture.
It’s also useful to create a mastermind group, perhaps of other founders or businessmen, who can guide you along your journey.
[This post by Dr. Aniruddha Malpani first appeared on LinkedIn and has been reproduced with permission.]
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