Did you know you can actually become a CEO without founding a company? It’s not well-heard of because the story is not as cool, but it’s super common.
Generally, there are two types of CEOs. A founder CEO and an onboarded CEO. Though this probably isn’t the right term, in this article we’ll be looking into an onboarded CEO, or the CEO who is hired after the founder.
An onboarded CEO is generally a more experienced veteran in the industry that has a track record and network to bring a company to the next level. From my interviews, perhaps there’s no clear track record for becoming an onboarded CEO, but there is a type of personality that you can tell that they are fit to lead.
The Role
About 10% of our episodes involve interviewing CEOs and I always ask “what does a CEO mean to you?”.
In general, you get an answer that depends on the company culture but at the end of the day your job is to strategize, lead and like the E in CEO, execute.
I’ve been in a few companies where there have been a transitional switch in leadership and based on the interviews, there are many reasons why founders step down and have to onboard a CEO. The big reason is that company growth is plateauing or has the potential to be influx and there needs to be systems built fast to set up for fast growth. Episode 199 Lily’s Chocolate CEO Jane Miller is a great example of someone with the experience and network to bring in people and create organizational structure as the company was exploding.
Overall, this type of CEO’s job is to fix problems that the company is currently having and poise them to get out of a net neutral or negative growth. Generally, you can go so far without systems but you need systems to sustain a growing company.
Common Pathways
As a scientist, I can’t help but recognize trends. It turns out your college degree doesn’t matter, but an MBA is very useful. The last three CEO interviews with Evan Holod from Michel et Augustin, Scott Lerner from Farmhouse Culture, and Jane Miller from Lily’s shows a New York banker, a military vet and a Russian literature major all get the title of high growth CEO. There seems to be no common ground in terms of origins.
It is also interesting to note that at least with these three, came from huge companies such as Coca-Cola, Pepsico and Frito-Lay. However, What I found very interesting is that though they were in their companies for a long period of time, they moved every couple of years internally and talk about big accomplishments. Most of the time it was because they needed them to do a specific job and no one else could do it. They became familiar with different roles rather through entrepreneurial brute force or hopping around the corporate ladder when needed.
Another common thread is to be on defining projects that make your career (most terrible projects don’t break your career)
A good quote somewhere on linkedin, from Tachaphon Srisaovajati captures this well.
“If you want to grow in the company, you need to volunteer to work in the project that nobody wants to, no matter how hard it is. When the project is successful, you then turn from nobody to become somebody” Today I received this inspiring advice from senior management.
Creating stories about your success, and refining the message of these stories is extremely important when it comes to climbing up the ladder. In my experience, doing projects nobody wants to do like a weekly food industry podcast, a 5-year old vegan bar project, blending plant-meat with flesh-meat, or setting up a new program in a company that’s in flux excites me and as these projects become successful, the more credibility I have. I’m lucky because they actually worked, but I also record and reflect on each experience and share it with others. As long as you consistently share it, it adds up, and your reputation grows.
It’s important to know that reputation is generally a gamble, but you get better the more times you fail. It’s also easy to gain because not many people like taking on extra projects. Don’t get discouraged if a project fails because at the end of the day, people forget.
The network is also super valuable. Most of the onboarded CEOs I’ve talked to got the role through a friend of a friend and not only that, but knew people who would help them get their company to the next level. Great industry leaders have great networks because they not only want to network, but because they realize that networking is valuable from a career standpoint. The great thing is that a great reputation generally brings a great network and the skillset for accomplishing projects nobody wants synergizes really well with networking.
Modern Viewpoint
Unfortunately, onboarded CEOs are not in their 20s. They have decades of experience but you can argue that the experience that made them great CEOs is from short, important projects that they could tell a story about.
All that means is that you have plenty of time.
Just remember, Evan Holod did seven years of financing before wanting to go into food. Scott Lerner worked in diapers, and Jane had a degree studying Russian literature. It really doesn’t matter where you start, but it does matter what you’ve accomplished.
The big issue is that in today’s career climate, it’s almost impossible for a company to really support you. In the past, companies gave you things like a livable wage and a pension by just doing nothing but now that’s hard to do. There’s too much noise and loyalty is very hard to win without standing out. Though the people I’ve interviewed have been in large organizations for a very long time, perhaps it’s different today. Perhaps because of the internet, or because of how systems communicate, we don’t need a company tied to our reputation, but rather our accomplishments to be individualized. If an instagram influencer can make money off of a picture on the beach, or a podcaster can make money interviewing people, you can make a story about your career accomplishments that will boost your reputation. This is where the world is heading.
Whatever you want to be when you grow up, the most important thing to do is to keep on being curious and keep on doing great things. Document them and talk about them, because doing that amplifies your growth. Think of your accomplishments like writing a story. It doesn’t matter where you start or what time frame the story is, but how you tell it. Your goal might not be CEO, but you can be successful in any career path as long as you can talk about your progress. The best way to start is to do something no one else wants to do and go from there.
