Being a CEO (What they don’t tell you)

What's your favorite position?" he asked.

She said, "CEO."

"Are you for real?"

Okay, the media glamorizes these high-power CEOs without actually revealing what goes on behind the scenes. In a recent interview with Jensen Huang, the CEO of the most valuable company in the world, Nvidia, he said that if he knew how painful starting a company was, he wouldn't have done it. "I wouldn't do it. I know the reason why I wouldn't do it, and it goes back to why it's so hard. Building a company and building Nvidia turned out to have been a million times harder than any of us expected it to be. And at that time, if we realized the pain and suffering and just how vulnerable you're going to feel and the challenges that you're going to endure, the embarrassment and the shame and the list of all the things that go wrong, I don't think anybody would start a company. Nobody in their right mind would do it."

So here's the truth, okay? A perspective many of you have never seen or heard. Here are 15 things no one tells you about being a CEO.

Welcome to Alux, the place where future billionaires come to get inspired.

Number one: You are no longer paid to do things but paid to hire smarter people than you. You're basically a glorified recruiter. At some point, every successful entrepreneur transitions from building products to building teams. Your success metrics go from a task list to a people puzzle. Once you've got the right people, give them the tools and resources required for them to succeed, and get the hell out of the way.

The biggest mistake first-time CEOs make is they still try to micromanage the talent they acquire.

On that note, number two: Your goal is to build a company that runs better without you. At this stage, you get rewarded based on the systems you have in place. Running a company is a terrible job with a lot of weight on your shoulders. You level up only after you distribute that weight across your team.

You've heard about systems and playbooks a million times, yet most of you have yet to implement any of it. Most of you are still in the trenches doing the day-to-day operations because if you didn't do it, it wouldn't get done. That's when you know you're running a job, not a business.

Number three: You're a psychologist now, playing with carrots and sticks. Since your job is effectively managing humans, a core skill is understanding what makes people tick. It's all about the balance between incentives and keeping people accountable. People work for different reasons; some for money, others for recognition or a sense of purpose. Understanding this is crucial because your approach will be tailored to each person; their self-esteem is important because it dramatically alters their productivity.

Always praise in public and criticize in private. Here's a golden nugget piece of advice we got from a top CEO a couple of years back: Give the credit, keep the money. People want to be seen; give them the spotlight and the credit because it validates them. Your long-term goals are more important than your short-term goals. Let them have the praise.

Number four: It's never the new thing that will get you there, but doing the basics better than you do now. Look, okay, it's the boring stuff that'll get you the win. It's making fewer mistakes; it's not wasting money carelessly. It's about delivering a great product and a great framework for this: more better new. What you're doing is already working, so make it work better because that's the kind of growth that compounds.

You do what is required, not what is desired. There are no tasks beneath you, okay? You probably already have a long list of little things that you should be doing but haven't gotten to them yet. CEOs are creators, so it's easy to default to what we like to do best—try to build something new. All the riches in the world lie beyond the self-control required to focus yourself to get the boring stuff right instead of always getting distracted.

Number five: You've got three jobs, in this order: cash flow, vision, people. So let's tackle the first one. A business needs to make money or have access to money in order to keep the lights on. It doesn't matter how great the product is, how great the people are, or how big the vision is; if you don't have enough oxygen to survive. This is why money, or more specifically predictable cash flow coming in, is your number one priority. As long as the business makes money, you're okay.

The second one is vision. Vision simply means seeing something that isn't there but could be if you build it. The vision is what helps you make the basic choices in your day-to-day operations. The reason why vision comes before people is that people need a vision as a reason to join. And you need a vision to know where you're going.

Now lastly, your job is people. Your vision is bigger than what you can achieve by yourself. You need people—smart people, hardworking people, problem-solving people—who can help move the numbers your business requires. If you want to learn exactly how to focus your efforts on cash flow, vision, and people, go to alux.com/slapp right now and start your free trial.

Our app has all the time-tested and proven strategies that will save you years of mistakes and hundreds of dollars in bad calls. Hundreds of thousands of CEOs, entrepreneurs, business owners, and top managers use our app to make their vision become a reality faster. If you're a subscriber to our YouTube channel, scan the QR code on screen for 25% off your yearly membership.

Okay, so now we've spoken a lot about people, so let's break it down further.

Number six: The fastest way to millions is to hire the right people. Because look, okay, a good hire is the equivalent of exponential growth. You can tell someone is a good hire if they're able to make the right decision for the company on their own; they solve problems, okay? They don't create problems. They're able to manage existing resources and other people to achieve the goals you set out for them.

A good hire is result-oriented. A good hire understands the math behind performance. This is why STEM earns more than social studies in the marketplace. You want to be a good hire? Find the number the company cares about the most and move it. And you want to find people who can do that.

Well, most likely you'll have to steal them from other businesses where they've already done what you're looking to do. You might not like hearing this, but the cost of figuring out how to move that number is years of trial and error and money burned in the process. As a CEO, you need to smarten up and acquire expertise without compromising the business.

On the flip side, number seven: The fastest way to misery is to hire the wrong people. A bad hire is a tumor that starts spreading inside the organism that is your business. Not only is it going to suck in essential resources, but they negatively impact everyone else in the organization in the process. When you make a bad hire, you end up paying them and still doing the work yourself.

When you make a bad hire, everyone else in your organization needs to work harder, and on top of that, they start to doubt your judgment. When you keep a bad hire, you invalidate the work of everyone else. Same with the tumor; the sooner you cut it out, the sooner everything gets back on track. The reason why most CEOs don't make this move is that they're afraid of having that uncomfortable conversation required to let someone go.

So here's another golden nugget for you: A business is not a family; it's a sports team. A family tolerates because blood is thicker than water, or so they say. But as a CEO, you have no such obligation here. If someone doesn't perform, you swap them out for someone who's game-ready. Everyone on your team depends on you replacing the weak links and helping drive them to victory. Don't waste time here.

Number eight: If you talk to your customers, you'll get there twice as fast. As a CEO, you're arrogant enough to think you know what the customers need before they do. Now this might be true in the very early days of founding a company, but not in the long term because business is all about priorities. Some things are a lot more valuable to solve than others.

If you don't have your priorities straight, your team will default to solving what's convenient or exciting for them to solve, not what is important. A couple of days ago, we sent out an email to our app users to figure out what we're doing great and what we can do better—it's direct feedback to the pain our users feel, a pain that's easily solvable by us.

So we shifted our priorities from developing new functionalities we thought would be a game changer to just doing what our customers love even better. The only reason we built the Alux app was to serve our community of people just like us, building it together with them assures we always have a product-market fit.

Number nine: Working harder does not lead to more money. Working hard equals more money only if you're trading your time for money. Once you level up, hard is replaced by smart, meaning working harder no longer translates to long hours, but instead the type of problems you solve changes. The more difficult the problem you solve, the more money you make.

The paradox is the more things you try to solve, the less money you make. Some of you have capped your earnings because you try to do too much instead of doing that one thing you know works really, really well.

Number ten: The path to glory leads through you. All the people that work with you need to believe in your ability to figure out the future—a future where all their dreams become reality as a result of you achieving yours. This is why they work with you, not for you.

Once you understand this distinction, you'll start looking at your employees differently. You don't realize it, but the future of your company hangs in the balance because of how much the people you work with care about what they do.

20% extra effort per month compounds to 9x the amount of output in one year. Just 20% more effort in a month leads to these obscene discrepancies in outcome. This is why other people are outcompeting you. Someone who cares about their work, someone who pays attention to details only they will notice, is worth four to five times a regular person.

Number eleven: Regular cleaning is a must. Now, since the beginning of the year, we installed a new system of optimizing costs at Alux, and we're not going to gatekeep, okay? So here it is: Every 3 months, we go through what we're calling a spring cleaning. We remove any unnecessary costs. We cut costs any way we can.

This means firing the agency that did some work, firing an employee that's been one foot out the door for months. We stop any effort that doesn't show promises of a positive ROI. The first spring cleaning is the easiest because you've got lots of fat to trim, and your books immediately start to look a lot better.

But the second one, three months after the first, will surprise you. You think you've cut most of the fat already, but guess what? There's more. Turns out if you look for it, you'll find plenty of inefficiencies or people who are paid more than what they produce or what the market deems fair. After three or four of these cleanings, you'll run a lean, well-oiled machine. Your investors or potential buyers will fall even more in love with your business.

Number twelve: Regular reminders of what is important are a must. Here's another golden nugget for you: Your employees need to hear the same information five times before they remember it's important. You think your employees share the same emotions that you do or perceive threats to the business the same way you do, but they don't.

They lack the same sense of urgency or hierarchy of priorities, and this is where you, as a CEO, reshape their priorities according to what you think is important. Your job is to play the game from a big-picture perspective. This is why you ended up as CEO. The people under you might not even think that you're correct in your decision-making visions, so you need to show them how things will play out.

The reason why you'll win is that you are right when other people are wrong. Nobody else in your organization can make this kind of call, and it's important that you trust yourself even when they don't.

Number thirteen: Employees look to you to set the pace. So it's 60 to 80 plus hours for you. This is why being number one sucks so much, okay? This is why Elon sleeps on the floor of the Tesla factory. This is why your employees need to see you put in 100 hours a week.

When the CEO works 100 hours a week, it kind of sucks if you're only putting in 40. Now, sure, it's different at different scales of the company, but in small to middle organizations, you set the pace—you are the culture. If you are late, that means it's okay for them to be late. You can't hold others accountable to a standard that you don't hold yourself.

Number fourteen: The only people who can relate to you are other CEOs of similar-sized companies. Now this is such a unique position that it's an isolating experience, truly. A lot is riding on your ability to make decisions that impact the lives of tens, hundreds, thousands of people. Their dreams, their welfare, their families depend on you having your act together, not to mention the fact that your future depends on that as well.

This is why birds of a feather flock together. This is why CEOs come together because, well, they're able to vent about what they're dealing with. Building wealth is one of the most isolating experiences ever, and there's rarely someone you trust that can provide a real path forward.

That's why we built the Alux app, so that people who've already done it can tell you what it's like, what to expect, and what to look out for while you do it. So do yourself a favor right now and use that app for 7 days. It won't cost you any money, and you'll still find some of the answers that you're looking for.

And number fifteen: You are only one hire away from a happier, richer, and more stress-free company. You're probably dealing with a problem right now, so you've got two options: A) You go ahead and try to fix it yourself, or B) You find someone who's done this before to fix it for you.

Now all entrepreneurs and CEOs are pretty much split between the A or B approach. Those who go for the A route are exhausted; they hate their job, they hate their work, they wish it would all go away, but they need it too much to let it go. So it's a spiral of misery.

These companies barely ever grow out of that small business stage because there's not really a business; they're actually a job with more complex payrolls. Those who go the B route are the ones who build the big businesses because they're primed for scaling.

If the A description triggered you, or at least sounds familiar, you're failing at a crucial business skill—the ability to attract and retain talent. But we'll save that topic for a future video, and if there's enough interest in it, we'll break it down for you guys.

Those of you who are in a position to confirm which of these things did you learn the hard way, share your story in the comments. We can't wait to read it.

And since you stuck around until the very end, here's your bonus: The biggest price you pay is in the cost of not knowing what you're doing. If you were smarter, the problem you're dealing with right now would have been solved already.

Every year, you leave millions of dollars on the table because you don't know enough. This is just how much your ignorance is costing you. This is how much your inability to hire people is costing you. This is how much you're losing by not investing more in yourself.

Now, we know it can be hard in the early days, where every single dollar is budgeted, which is why we want to help you get there faster. Our entire premise was to offer content like this for free so that when you eventually do have enough money, you'll be able to afford one of our products.

If you've made a little bit of progress but aren't massive yet, we've got a gift for you. This is a secret QR code that gets you 50% off your yearly subscription to the app. Instead of $1.99, you pay only $99. You're getting $100 on us because we know it'll benefit you in lowering the costs of your unknowns.

The app will pay for itself in the first month if you're already moving, or in the first three if you're just starting out. If one day you're going to take pride in being the CEO of your own company, write the word "CEO" in the comments. Let's see how many CEOs we've got in the building.