5 KEY POSITIONS TO HAVE IN YOUR BUSINESS

Every business essentially runs the same. It doesn’t matter whether you are a doctor and owns your own practice or you are manufacturing paper clips. All businesses are composed of the same elements and must consider the same basic functions. Every business must also have a few key players with the ability to bring specific knowledge to the table. Now, I understand that when new businesses start out oftentimes the owners try to wear all of the hats for the various roles needed because there aren’t enough resources to hire the talent needed to fulfill each position. However, if you intend to expand or are currently growing please consider adding the people needed to fill the empty spaces.

Most all businesses, big or small, are made up of the following members listed below. These titles are given for a specific reason. Corporate positions are reserved for the leaders of the business because the decisions made for their department ends with them.

• Chief Executive Officer (CEO) – More often than not this is the original start-up owner. They are the ones with the ideas for the business that the original owner stayed up all night dreaming of, and writing the original business plan for. They are responsible for holding the vision and conveying that vision to the rest of the company.
  

• Chief Operations Officer (COO) – This is the member that divides that vision into steps and delegates those steps to the rest of the team. They ensure quality control, consistency, efficiency, policy adherence, and compliance. He/She should generally be a team builder, motivator, and have the ability to identify talent while having a love for systems and structure to meet quota and deadlines.
  

• Chief Financial Officer (CFO) – The CFO makes sure the project is funded, vendors and staff get paid, and sees to it that reserves are built and production is in accordance to profit and sales margins. Most CFOs are structured and numbers-driven, and this is how you want them to be. The “numbers” in your business are important and can both show and predict the health of the company.
  

• Chief Technology Officer (CTO) – The role of the Technology Officer grows in breadth and importance every day as more and more technology is relied on for servicing the customer and maintaining the methods of doing business. This officer is saddled with the dual responsibility of speed and efficiency, but also the security of the digital side of the business. Further, the digital side of today’s business is both internal/private and external/customer-facing, and those two sides must share information in the blink of an eye! This person is generally strategic, and a big picture person that can envision the system as a whole and probably question everything.
  

• Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) – Finally, there is your Chief Marketing Officer, who is nearly the most important person on the list. The role of this player is to make sure that everything you are doing as a business owner is actually relevant to your customer! You can have the best product that is seamlessly integrated with your digital platform, and efficiently produced and in-line with your funding forecast, but if your customer has no idea you are doing it, then it’s pointless! Someone needs to identify your target market and let them know you have it and tell them the benefits of their purchase. Most often they are relational and seek to understand the thought processes and buying patterns of the target customer.

Considering the above list, we must take the time and consideration to acknowledge two things. The first being that most of us start out on a shoestring budget. Additionally, as the business owner, we are probably more willing than anyone to struggle for hours to accomplish a task. At a certain point, we must admit that there are certainly things that we suck at. Furthermore, we owe it to our business to figure out what those tasks are and begin to delegate them if we ever want to scale the business!

There are many different personalities in the world. To better understand this statement, taking a look at Meyers Briggs and DISC profiling would be beneficial. When I spoke of roles in the prior paragraphs it was to indicate the task/skill-based knowledge you should add. However, when seeking these skills, pay close attention to the personality of the person holding that skill because it can be just as, if not, more important than the skills of the person. If you don’t get along on a personality level with this person, the talent is irrelevant! So here’s a great piece of advice: seek positivity in your teammates, because no one wants to hang around a Debbie downer!

As business owners, we can be good at many things but only GREAT at a few. I, for one, would prefer to be great at executing a few things and hire people that are also GREAT at the things I am only “good” or “fair” at. Keep your eyes open for talent because the right people on your team can LAUNCH your business to heights you would never be able to reach on your own!

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