In this solo episode, Josh Hadley explores how the CEO's role evolves as an ecommerce business scales. He traces the journey from hands-on operator managing every detail to strategic leader focused on high-level priorities. Drawing from his own experience, including a four-week time study, Josh outlines where CEOs should invest their time at each growth stage. Key focus areas include attracting top talent, defining brand vision, building strategic partnerships, and optimizing financial models. His core message: delegation and strategic focus, not micromanagement, are what drive businesses toward eight and nine figures.
Bullet Points:
- The evolving role of a CEO in an ecommerce business as it grows.
- Transition from hands-on management to strategic leadership.
- Importance of delegation and hiring specialized talent.
- Conducting time studies to identify CEO-level tasks versus delegable tasks.
- Challenges of micromanagement and the need to trust team members.
- Strategies for investing regained time effectively.
- Attracting and retaining top talent within the organization.
- Defining and communicating a clear brand vision.
- Developing strategic partnerships to enhance business opportunities.
- Financial stewardship and optimizing revenue models for growth.
Timestamps:
00:00:00 Introduction to the Evolving CEO Role
The host introduces himself and the topic: how a CEO's responsibilities must change as an e-commerce business grows.
00:02:00 The CEO's Time Study
The host shares his personal experience conducting a four-week time study to identify and delegate non-CEO level work.
00:03:04 The "Subject Matter Expert" Phase
In the beginning, the CEO is the hands-on expert, handling everything from product research to PPC campaigns.
00:04:03 The First Million-Dollar Milestone
After hitting $1 million, the CEO's role shifts to reinvesting for growth, often by expanding product offerings.
00:05:07 The Cycle of Growth and Delegation
The CEO identifies bottlenecks, hires specialists to solve them, and then doubles down on other sales-generating activities.
00:06:57 Leading Through People
Crossing the $20 million mark requires a transition from hands-on execution to leading managers and department heads.
00:08:00 Common Pitfalls for CEOs with Free Time
CEOs who delegate successfully must avoid wasting their newfound time or, most damagingly, starting another distracting business venture.
00:09:53 Investing in Your Team
The first priority for a CEO should be retaining talent by improving team experience, building culture, and supporting people.
00:11:21 Focusing on Brand Vision
The CEO must clarify and communicate the brand's long-term vision to guide the company and retain key employees.
00:13:13 Developing Strategic Partnerships
CEOs should spend time building relationships with key industry players, potential hires, and co-branding partners for future growth.
00:14:11 Overseeing Financial Health
A key CEO role is allocating resources effectively, managing cash flow, and ensuring the business can support its growth.
00:15:11 Architecting the "Money Model"
CEOs must focus on engineering the business model to maximize customer lifetime value, not just front-end acquisition profits.
00:17:21 The CEO's High-Level Focus
The CEO should work on the big picture—people, vision, brand, and money model—not tactical day-to-day tasks.
00:19:19 The Most Important CEO Skill: Selling
A CEO's number one skill is selling the vision to recruit and retain top talent, which provides the most leverage.
00:20:20 Helping Others Become Millionaires
The ultimate mindset shift: a CEO's goal should be to build a business that helps their key leaders succeed financially.
Links and Mentions:
Tools and Concepts
"AI": "00:02:00"
"Time Study": "00:02:00"
"PPC (Pay-Per-Click)": "00:05:07"
Books
"$100 Million Money Models by Alex Hormozi": "00:16:49"
Key Concepts
"Product Market Fit": "00:04:03"
"Brand Vision": "00:11:58"
"Customer Lifetime Value": "00:15:41"
Recommendations
"Develop Partnerships": "00:12:51"
"Financial Health of the Business": "00:13:45"
Quotes
"If you want to become a billionaire, you've got to get really, really, really good at helping other people become millionaires.": "00:20:42"
Transcript:
Josh Hadley 00:00:00 Today, I'm going to dive into how the role of a CEO entrepreneur has to evolve over the growth of that business and the tasks and the roles that that CEO is responsible for. Welcome to the Ecomm Breakthrough Podcast. I'm Josh Hadley. I've scaled my own ecommerce brand from 0 to 8 figures, and I'm actively building towards nine figures in sales. This podcast is where I document that journey and share the systems, the strategies, and the lessons learned in real time so that you can learn what actually matters and scale your own business. First of all, my name is Josh Hadley. I am a man of faith. I am a husband to a beautiful wife and a father of four children. I have been selling in the e-commerce space for over a decade, doing multi-million in revenue on channels such as Amazon, TikTok, Shop and Shopify. And I am also the host of the number one business strategy podcast for ecommerce entrepreneurs. And that is E-com breakthrough. Today, we're going to talk about what it means to actually be a CEO, especially when you're the entrepreneur who built the organization from scratch.
Josh Hadley 00:00:58 And here's the challenge. There's not a direct playbook that applies to every single business that you have to follow. And so the role of the CEO is, frankly speaking, quite nebulous. And it requires a massive amount of adaptability and extensive leadership skills in order to pull this off in a significant way. At the end of the day, if you look at any $100 million brand, it all goes back to how good the original leader or founder was or was not. Sometimes there is kind of like lightning strikes and it's a really crappy leader and a really crappy founder, and they just hit a significant product market fit. That does happen. And honestly speaking, those are more often than not, a lot of the news stories that you hear about doesn't mean they were actually that good of an operator or that great of a leader. And so with that being said, what do you do and how do. How does your role as a CEO have to evolve as your ecommerce brand is growing over time? And so let's talk about it because this is something that has happened for me in my own business, and I'm speaking from experience.
Josh Hadley 00:02:00 And to be honest with you, right now, I'm going through another weird inflection point in my business, and that's where this is coming from. I recently conducted a four week time study where I studied my time literally from sunup to sundown. I jotted down everything I did in 15 minute increments, and using AI and using my own human intelligence, I thought through and said, hey, what am I doing right? That is actually CEO level work, and what am I doing that like, is not CEO level work that needs to be delegated, deleted, or sometimes doubled down on. And so it's from that mindset that I understood, wow, there's a lot of things that I need to add, delete and delegate to other people. And that honestly leaves me in this like weird spot where, hey, if I'm delegating that to somebody else, what am I supposed to be doing? And so it's in that question of me asking ...
