The Hard Thing about Hard Things

Quote

“Great CEOs face the pain…..and all say I didn’t quit”, Ben Horowitz, The Hard Thing About Hard Things.

Context

The term WarTime CEO originated from Ben Horowitz’s best selling book “The Hard Thing About Hard Things”.

For those of you who are entrepreneurs, founders or CEOs, no doubt you have had episodes where you felt complete isolation or helplessness in the face of seemingly insurmountable challenges.

The fact is building a startup or scaleup is just super hard. Challenges are never ending and can manifest from nowhere to punch you in the face.

Many of you would have read this book and found some solace.

As an entrepreneurial CEO with 2 decades of experience leading startups and scaleups, both private and public, I feel like most of the time I have been a WarTime CEO.

During the toughest of times, one thing I keep coming back to is this from Ben’s book:

Real Life Story

Over the last 12 months, I have had many friends and peers who are CEOs, founders, and/or entrepreneurs share that they have endured the toughest year they have ever experienced in business.

Most cited that it was worse than what they experienced in 2008 and reminded them of 2002 (for those who were in business then).

The combination of the highest inflation and interest rates in 2 decades has resulted in revenues being crimped, escalating costs, and deterioration in working capital and liquidity.

In these situations, according to Horowitz, it is necessary to switch into WarTime CEO mode.

I started this newsletter to create a community where fellow CEOs, founders and entrepreneurs can be real - sharing true life war stories of trials and tribulations, as well as triumphs born out of adversity with each other.

In addition, we have created a menu of practical resources to help you be the best you can be as a WarTime CEO (see below).

Practical Tools

There are very few resources which authentically unpack business building war stories.

Here are some books and a podcast that do:

• Hard Thing About Hard Things - by Ben Horowitz, as mentioned above.

• The Everything Store - first biography on Amazon and Bezos, by Brad Stone. The most memorable paragraph for me talked about how Bezos would be walking around with his head on fire but would be cool as a cucumber whilst everyone else was wilting or leaving.

• Onwards - by Howard Schulz which unpacks how Starbucks “fought for its life without losing its soul”.

• HyperTurnaround! - a chronicle of a turnaround of a software company with 6 weeks of cash to live to a 9 figure exit to Oracle just 4 years later. I led this turnaround and wrote the book to share the lessons learned and mistakes made along the way.

• How I Built This - podcast by Guy Raz, with some amazingly insightful interviews with business leaders sharing their business building journeys, complete with near death experiences. A recent one featuring Instagram was particularly insightful.

Find Out More

Are you a founder or CEO dealing with multiple fires in your business all at once? Are you in a stressful situation with seemingly unfixable problems?

What if I offered you our WarTime CEO playbook and system, as well as potential access to human and financial capital (*note: capital available for selected qualified candidates only*) that will transform your business within one quarter? 

I have been featured on Inc.com, Entrepreneur.com and wrote an Amazon best selling book called HyperTurnaround! that chronicles how I led the transformation of a business that had 6 weeks of cash to survive to a 9 figure exit to Oracle just 4 years later.

Book in a 1 on 1 CEO Mastermind Call with me as a starting point. Feel free to click the button below to proceed.

Until next week, be the calmest person in the room.

Kevin

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