A successful CEO, a business owner in general, a researcher, or a freelancer is not defined by how they look, talk or dress, but by their way of thinking. Your train of thought and the power of your imagination applied to your daily activities will impact your success or failure down the road.

Applying an extreme, subconscious, and constituent power to everything you do is key to becoming a successful CEO. With this in mind, here are five essential ways of thought you need to consider, especially if this is currently your most wanted goal:

1- It’s you who works for the team and not your team who works for you. Give them your full trust and create the best working conditions you can afford.

This may sound like a bold statement but your employees chose to be “work-for-hire” at this exact moment of their lives. It’s not fair to expect them to work as hard as you, the founder, does in the first place, nor would it be fair to put them in a position where they are less important than you. You took the decision to hire these people, with each employee possessing a set of skills that is different from yours, meaning they may be significantly better in something that you can also do, but you prefer to have them do it. All these skills and the combination of your team compiled are extremely important for your company and its success.

If they do not have the best working conditions that they know you can afford, they would eventually leave where they feel more appreciated. Hiring is always a guess — is this person right for the position? In their CV, it states that they are a graphic designer, but when completing a test task, you see that the delivery lacks essential elements. Or you call one of the references and they vigorously recommend the person to hire, even though they fired that person just a month ago. Maybe they were wrong for their job, but is he or she right for you and where your company is right now? It’s all subjective and relative. Unless you give your full trust to that person straight from the beginning, it’s simply better not to hire this person in the first place. Distrust can be felt from afar and for your new employee, and as a result, it would be impossible for them to perform in the best way they can.

2- If you wouldn’t use your own product, why should someone else? The same goes for, would you recommend your product to a close friend and ask them to pay for it?

Here is your product, it’s the new kid on the block and you are very proud of coming up with it and the idea of making it. You’ve spent long hours, days, and maybe years not only making it but also constantly improving it.

But, have you actually used it yourself? Not just tested, but really used it and at its full capacity? Have you experienced and analyzed the results of using it and would you really recommend it to your close friends and ask them to pay for it? If not, you need to think why and the answer might be something you don’t want to admit to yourself. What does the product need to have so you can start using it yourself and recommend it to others, who you know will be honest with their direct and candid feedback? If you build rockets, would you yourself go on board and take a seat in it? Keep studying, analyzing and improving it, until you yourself would be the first one in the line to pay for your own product.

3- Think platforms and not just products. With one great product you can scale quickly but only up to a certain point. Think bigger — how this product fits into a larger frame and build a platform for it.

This principle can also be exercised as the following: think of what your current product could very well bundle with, and imagine that you have unlimited resources to build things — what would be the platform it would very well sit on? Amazon is probably the greatest example, from an online book store it went to winning an Oscar and becoming a major e-commerce place around the globe. Build this imaginative platform in your head, think of prospective customers who would be using this platform and your product in it, and now unbundle this platform into multiple other products, including yours. Imagine how your current product will change its state in your head from this simple exercise, and repeat so often, even when the product is already launched.

4- Your business has good online visibility and this is great. But if you personally are not online — your business won’t strive. You need to be online for both — your employees and clients as well.

Today you are running one business and tomorrow there is someone who wants to buy it and you are about to start another one. You need to hire new employees and gain new clients, maybe even in a completely different industry. What stays constant is your personal brand — who you are, from where you are coming from, all your social media profiles, posts, videos, blogs, and pictures can be easily discovered even if you have decided to bury them for good.

It’s 2020 so everyone has this skill: to put keywords into a search engine and quickly find out anything they want to know, including deciding if they should work for you or buy something from you. That’s why you need to invest time and resources into building your own social media content history, which you should consider as if you were adding assets to your bank account. These can easily go empty if you make a wrong move or a statement, or neglect it for too long.

5- Work hard, but also party hard and sleep and eat well.

This is an important one. If you just work, your life becomes flat and dull after several months or years. Dilute your hard work with some activities or leisure time. It could be your favorite sporting activity or just let it all go from time to time and party like hell. It’s ok to decompress yourself and get a bit of a hangover the next day. You will freshen your perspective and continue to work even harder.

Why is sleep important? Because then you will be sharper and be able to make quicker decisions. It’s not about who works the longest hours, it’s about being able to follow your own intuition which tells you how to get there faster, and you can only hear your intuition when you are well-rested and eaten. Organize your life in a way that you reserve and devote hours to a goodnight’s sleep, healthy food to endeavor to keep you going, and other ways you like to unwind. It’s important to keep a perfect balance!

For questions contact me at Ask Sasha.