CEO Stories 079: Staying in Your Zone of Genius

The CEO Shift is among the hardest in your business as a solopreneur, but it’s also one of the most rewarding. Jessi + Marie share with us the way they balance two visions in their business and how they finally found the way to stay in their zone of genius more often.   For Marie, the longer she talks about thought leadership the more she sees it intertwined with the CEO role.  To be an effective CEO it requires thought leadership, taking expertise, influence, and innovation to put them together to inspire people.   Jessi adds that it is not being in every single detail.  Stepping into CEO means holding onto the vision and keeping it in line with the company’s value.  It is more than management; it is holding the vision. This requires trust in the people on your team and in your own goals.   They both shifted to CEO when hiring a team.  The first VA they hired was great for the business.   Marie and Jessi knew they needed to stay in there zone of genius.  Just because you can do it, does not mean that you have to. It may be more beneficial to outsource. They created a system to revisit the business plan multiple times a year.  They run vision exercises for their clients and they complete these tests as well.  It is not just based around the numbers but gets down to the mission and values. Marie and Jessi look at their visions separately and then look at it together.   When they are not on the exact same page, sometimes one person takes the lead, one tries to convince the other, or they table the ideas.   On the surface the two of them have a lot in common, but over time they have realized that they are different people.  They have different strengths and weaknesses which have help divide the workload. Jessi is the strategy and Marie is the feels.  On each project, one woman is the lead and one woman is the editor. It has helped them share the workload and keep their brain on their side of strength.   Now they are ready to test the next generation of ideas they want to implement.   At one point, there were 22 ways to work with them, and now they have 2 or 3.  It has streamlined everything to give them clarity for the future. They have clients coming to them due to their consistency of being in business for so long.  They feel closer to the vision than ever. Jessi stepped into CEO in the process of building a peer network.  Seeing examples of leaders in this really helped motivate her to do so. Marie agrees and the peer network connected her with people who asked her hard questions.  It allowed her to motivate herself to ask tough questions, uncover the stuff she was hiding from, and listening to others.   Your own team needs to buy into the vision.  You have to listen to them to make sure they are on the same page.