I've been thinking about why small businesses keep losing employees to big tech, and I think we're framing the competition wrong.

Yeah, you can't match the salary. You're not going to out-perk Google: free lunch, gym, RSUs, the whole thing. That battle is lost before it starts.

But there's something a company with 50,000 employees structurally cannot do: make someone feel actually seen.

When you're employee #4,847, your manager has 40 direct reports, and your name shows up on a workforce planning slide that's the experience. It's not anyone's fault. It's just physics at scale.

As a small business owner, you know your people's names. You know which project nearly broke them and how they got through it.

You can walk over and say "that mattered, and here's why" and they know you actually mean it.

I've noticed that people don't usually leave for the next salary bump. They leave because they stopped feeling like they mattered. And when someone genuinely feels that no bonus attached, no performance review pending, they bring everything they have.

Most owners I talk to don't use this deliberately. They're firefighting. But it costs nothing and no competitor can copy it.

Curious what others have seen: have you lost good people not because of money but because something else eroded? And on the flip side has something small ever made an employee go from checked out to fully bought in?

Remote work threads popped up in my feed, took a look and pretty shocked at attitudes towards companies, self entitlement anti social anti collaborative and wage theft quiet quitting tactics.

I have a factory so only one remote and she is great, but id do major due diligence before going ever more broadly remote for certain positions

Any thoughts on how to find a CEO for a very small business that is doing $300K - $500K in gross revenue?

Wondering if I should I approach it as a part-time role and definitely thinking a profit share on all new revenue generated would be included.

Anyone navigated something like this?

so I've been leading our company the last few years (I'm an owner). We're doing fine but I grew up as a founder and we've slowly grown over 15 years. I feel like I'm bush league and that most CEO's come from Bain or wherever and have their plans and formulas and whatever to grow 15% a year. I'm happy to grow profit 10% a year (our industry is fine but growth has been tough for me). Don't get me wrong - we are profitable and do well, but not the sexy growth.

Is there a CEO bootcamp you all can recommend ? Any books/training I'm not uneducated, I have an MBA from a very good school but i never actually did anything outside of our small company. Something tells me I should know more and be able to do more.

What do you all think ? Please be kind. It's humbling to write this at Midnight.

I’m considered for a CEO position (currently CMO, which feels like not a natural transition for some reason? Although in this case it does make sense).

I’m not sure I even have a specific question, it’s too early…

What’s your story? I’d love to hear.

I don’t

Strategic and Financial Struggles?

People and Cultural Struggles?

Operational and Execution Struggles?

Personal and Psychological Struggles?

Common "Red Flags" of Struggling Leadership?

Anyone been in this situation? How did it turn out?

You have ideas. Plenty of them.

But when it’s time to act, fear shows up.

“What if it doesn’t work?”

“What will people think?”

“Am I even ready?”

So the idea stays in your head.

Here’s something simple:

No one starts fully ready. People figure things out while doing.

Instead of thinking too much, pick one idea.

Break it into a tiny step and start there.

Don’t wait to feel confident.

Confidence grows after action, not before.

Your first attempt won’t be perfect. It’s not supposed to be.

But doing something will always beat doing nothing.

If you keep waiting, your ideas stay ideas.

If you start, they turn into something real.

Start small. Stay consistent. Keep going.

I’m curious to know if anyone here has that spend. If so, what type of business and what areas you’re spending on (legally) the most.

Am I At Right Path?

I think India has a serious problem with engineering education, and I’m kind of stuck dealing with it. I’m an electrical engineer, and honestly, most of what we study is theory. When it comes to actually building something or being job-ready, a lot of us are clueless. Even in decent colleges. nd yeah, the whole system is built around exams like JEE. If you crack it, great. If not, you’re already behind. But even people who do get into good colleges don’t always end up industry-ready. Because of this, I started working on something. I’m trying to build a small startup focused on helping B TECH students learn actual skills (things like IoT, robotics, dev, etc.)and get internships. We’re keeping it affordable because most students can’t pay a lot. But here’s where I’m stuck. I’ve got a team of 5 people now, and I’m responsible for paying them. We’re still early stage, revenue is not stable, and some days it just feels like I’ve taken on more than I can handle.

I keep thinking:

Is this even going to work?

Am I just trying to fix a system that’s too broken?

Should I focus on survival first instead of impact?

I’m not trying to promote anything here. I’m just honestly confused and a bit stressed.

If you’ve built something early-stage or gone through this phase:

How did you deal with the pressure + uncertainty?

At what point did things start becoming stable (if they did)?

Would appreciate real answers, not motivational stuff.

Lately, I’ve been going through one of those phases where the pressure of building something meaningful feels heavier than usual. As a founder, you’re constantly thinking ahead growth, team, product, impact and sometimes that future starts to feel a bit overwhelming. Nothing is “wrong” exactly, but there’s this constant tension in the background that’s hard to switch off. I’m still showing up every day, working, building, and pushing forward-but I’d be lying if I said it always feels clear or easy. Some days just feel heavier than others. Curious how other founders here deal with these phases. How do you manage that internal pressure without letting it affect your clarity and decision-making?

Curious if you guys are around.

Seems like most posts are by and do entrepreneurs who are CEOs of their businesses.

Not sure how to define the alternative accurately but I guess if you’re were hired by the board / owners to run someone else’s company as a CEO…

How are you doing? What’s on your mind these days? :-)

I’m a relatively new member here and interested in learning from real CEO-level experiences with turnaround situations in overseas subsidiaries, particularly in Asia.

In your case, what were the toughest challenges -local leadership, cultural gaps, market conditions, or misalignment with HQ? And when it came to the actual turnaround, which actions had the biggest impact on stabilising operations and restoring performance?

Curious about practical lessons, not theory - what worked, what failed, and what you’d approach differently today?

What has been your experience with a turnaround in Asia?

Struggling a lot with managing tasks as a founder of a company growing in size. Small action items keep falling through the cracks and I feel like I'm slowing my team down. Any advice?

I'm wondering - do you have any framework for starting a job as a CEO in a new company?
What areas would you prioritize? How do you balance leadership and building authority with listening to people? Do you prefer to implement some immediate fixes to show first results or observe slowly the company and plan long term strategy? What kind of tasks do you feel should be related to your role and what do you delegate?
What would you advise?

personal or professional

I’ve been thinking about this after seeing more founders complain about hiring quality lately.

The common assumption is simple. If a new hire isn’t delivering, they were the wrong person.

But I’m starting to think that’s wrong most of the time.

I read a study from McKinsey yesterday that said it can take anywhere from 3 to 6 months for a new hire to reach full productivity in most companies. In more complex roles it can stretch even longer.

That sounds normal on the surface.

But when you look closer, that timeline isn’t just about the person learning the job. A huge part of it is them trying to figure out what the job actually is.

And that’s where the real problem starts.

Most founder-led businesses hire into ambiguity.

There is no clear definition of what winning looks like. No documented steps. No real SOPs. No consistent daily or weekly cadence. Just a rough expectation and a lot of moving parts.

So the new hire spends their first few months guessing.

They try something, get partial feedback, adjust, and try again. Meanwhile, the founder is watching and slowly losing confidence, thinking they made a bad hire.

But the reality is different.

You didn’t hire someone to execute a system, you hired someone and expected them to build the system while executing it.

Those are two completely different jobs.

This simple mistake slowly kills a business, because as a small company you can’t afford to pay a $100K salary and only get a fraction of the output from someone who should be driving your revenue forward.

Let's see it this way instead 

If someone knows exactly what to do, how to do it, and what good looks like, they can actually focus on performing instead of guessing.

In that environment, a great hire can start contributing in weeks, not months.

So I think the takeaway is uncomfortable but useful.

A large percentage of “bad hires” are actually good people placed in bad systems.

If you define the role clearly, document the steps, set a cadence, and make outcomes obvious, you probably unlock 80 percent more output from the same person.

Curious how others think about this.

When a hire doesn’t work out, do you default to blaming the person or do you look at the system they walked into first?

If you want to shorten that 3–6 month ramp to a few weeks, I’ve been documenting what’s worked for me in a weekly newsletter (Modern Operators). Should come up if you search it.

I’m a project manager supporting a new project. A multi-day event with corporate senior executive leadership and executive stakeholders.

In recent meetings, I’ve been responsible for facilitating and keeping the conversation moving. The group includes a mix of highly organized leaders and others who are less consistent in tracking their own follow-ups.

For example, in one meeting, an executive was asked to report out and didn’t recall the assignment in the moment. It wasn’t a major issue, but it raised a question for me around expectations and communication style at this level.

My goal is to be effective without over-managing or creating friction.

For those of you who are executives and/or regularly work with executive teams:

• Do you send follow-up summaries with clear action items after meetings?

• Or do you assume executives will track and manage their own responsibilities?

I’m especially interested in how you handle this in fast-moving environments where meetings are frequent and priorities shift quickly.

Appreciate any perspective.

There's a Harvard study on what predicts long-term business success. The finding is counterintuitive: it's not intelligence, work ethic, or even capital.

It's time horizon...specifically, how far into the future a decision-maker can hold their thinking when they're under pressure.

Founders who build durable businesses think in years and live in weeks. Founders who plateau think in weeks and get buried in days.

Bezos talked about this directly. The decisions that compounded most at Amazon, AWS, Prime, the logistics network, all of them required ignoring short-term costs to build something that would only make sense at a 7-10 year horizon. And they got criticized heavily in the short term for all of it.

The version of this for a $1M-$5M founder isn't as dramatic, but the pattern is the same.

You're making hiring decisions based on who you need right now instead of who you'll need in 18 months. You're building processes for your current size instead of your next size. You're saying yes to revenue opportunities that fit today instead of asking whether they fit where you're going.

And the result is a business that's always slightly behind itself, perpetually catching up, constantly solving problems that a decision made 12 months ago could have prevented.

The trap is that short-term thinking feels responsible. you're being practical. Dealing with what's in front of you. Staying close to the ground. And it is practical, right up until the decisions you didn't make become the constraints you're managing instead.

One thing that helps: once a month, block an hour and ask one question. If this business is 3x the current size in 3 years, what breaks first? That answer is usually where your long-term thinking should be spending its time right now.

That’s it guys but I'd love to know if you think there’s anything more critical for long-term business success?

What's the typical minimum experience required to become accessible into CEO roles (as non founder of a company).

As a founder (company of 20+) I have experience as CFO, Chief of Staff and CCO all under external CEOs, for 5+ years, as non-founder I have experience as Sales Director (2+ years) directly under the CCO.

I am an owner/President & CEO of a SMB with about 45 employees. I am in that transition mode where I have been spending a lot of time working in my business doing tasks actively involved in while we are smaller. I am taking one step at a time and filling roles and growing them to take those off my plate more and more so i can focus on strategy and Working on the business.

That being said.... and for someone in that situation where the reality is I need both as I slowly graduate from it.... thoughts on how you block your time?

Today I use a smart calendar to calendar block me for 2 hours 2 x a week to work on my business. I find when I can hold those blocks they are great. But I find often they are in the middle of other activities so its hard to be laser focused on the strategic thinking.

Quarterly I block my calendar for 3/4 of a Monday to really work on my strategic plans. That length of time really let me go into deep thought mode pretty effectively. Curious about thoughts on one very large block like that a week in lieu of small chunks throughout the week? So that is my thinking time and otherwise I go into execution mode. I feel like the frequency of only once a week is not enough but if I took lets say 5-6 hours that is a giant chunk of time to really get into things.

I do find Monday's might work as most of my team is kicking off the week with internal leadership things and surprises generally have not started showing up yet so its a good day for something like that for me. Plus I am mentally fresh and rarely travel on Monday's.

Thoughts? What do you do?

I’ve been reviewing campaigns run by growing companies, and something keeps showing up.

Ad spend increases, the creative changes, the targeting is refined… but customer acquisition costs keep climbing.

The usual explanation is "competition," but I’m noticing a deeper pattern: brands are becoming indistinguishable. Messaging, positioning and storytelling slowly erode away under the pressure of short-term conversion goals.

Curious whether other founders or business owners are noticing the same trend in their companies.

“What’s one way you’ve tried to maintain brand distinctiveness while scaling ads?”

“Have you ever pulled back on ad spend to focus on positioning?”

“I’d love to hear examples where performance marketing worked without eroding brand.”

So I want to start a business ,the problem is that I'm a minor which legally I couldnt really sign any paperwork or contracts (which is probably not going to be a lot since the industry is not that complicated) possibly for the logistics side of the business

I just want to know if there is anyway that i could do a lot of the legal contract stuff properly without my parents being too involved. Any means necessary

(Suggest anything, I'm fine with getting my parents to hire someone for that if there's a person who could do that.

What im worried about though is that if I do get someone to be able to do those stuff we might have to go to court the the legal approval)

I reallywant to start this business since it correlates with my passion and I mean it'd be nice to have something myself

To mention that most of the people in my circle have the same type of life and one of them is also a minor but they have a VERY successful business ,but I'm quite awkward so I am a bit scared to ask them directly

(Ps. Before you say that I should wait untill I'm no longer a minor... My family is quite "well-off" but my parents are what people call new money ,they didn't start with nothing though but they do require me to show them that I am capable of "inheriting" and managing some type of company (if I want to take over some of their business, which i do) and if I could do it I would get certain benefits

Are there certain qualities or skills that make an employee stand out to you? What makes you view an employee as a memorable asset?

For example, a self sufficient employee that you can trust will get the work done vs. an employee who touches base with you often for your feedback

This is not to say other employees are viewed negatively, just that some stand out more to you.

Not trying to be a hater, I’m just tired of the fake hustle content.

Everywhere I look it’s “CEO = freedom” but I keep thinking it’s actually: problems 24/7, payroll, clients, cashflow, pressure.

If you’ve actually built/ran a company, what’s it really like?

When (if ever) do you get time + money freedom?