Leading a team onto the battlefield of business – or quite literally a battlefield – isn’t for the faint of heart. Being a leader is about setting the route for others to follow; it’s a huge responsibility that often results in having to make extremely difficult decisions.

“A month or two into my role as a platoon leader, I'm brand new leading a tank platoon with 15 soldiers and I had to fire my platoon sergeant. And the platoon sergeant is the key guy who is driving the organization. As a 22-year-old kid, that's probably the hardest decision I ever made.”

Chris Hsu is an Army vet, business vet, and current entrepreneur. Cultivating strong teams and successful leadership models has been Chris’s MO since his first job in the military.

The list of reasons a start-up can fail is endless, but leadership is at the heart of many of the issues young businesses face. And no matter how brilliant your product or business is, with poor leadership, success will be hard to come by… and even more difficult to hold on to.

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Learn more about The Journey at mission.org/thejourney.

The Journey is sponsored by our friends at Salesforce Essentials. We use Salesforce Essentials every day and it’s part of our own business journey. Essentials combines sales and service tools in a single app to help small businesses win customers and keep them happy. See how Salesforce Essentials can help you be your best business at salesforce.com/thejourney.