Bajan Sun Magazine - Caribbean Entrepreneurs Vol 1 Issue 11 | Page 112

7 Fundamentals A CEO Must Nail you call J ust because you one. doesn’t make yourself a CEO people want to buy, nothing else matters seriously. For one thing, if a board of directors doesn’t name you chief executive officer of a real corporation, you’re sort of like a silly little kid playing grownup. More importantly, you’re probably misrepresenting your abilities, as well. If you can’t sell your vision. Nobody will buy it. We all talk about the importance of vision, but you have to be able to sell it to potential customers, employees and investors and I mean all day long. If your stakeholders don’t buy it, nobody else will either. If you find yourself pitching your concept in your dreams, you’re on the right track. If you don’t have these seven concepts down, you may want to think about changing your Twitter and LinkedIn profiles. And I definitely wouldn’t quit my day job just yet, either. Your product is your brand - you’re not. The secret to great marketing is to come up with a killer product customers need at the right price. You can promote your business and yourself all day long, but if you can’t come up with an awesome product that Additionally, you must always have enough money in the bank. The number one failure for small businesses is they run out of cash. There was a time when you could bootstrap a company, but markets are so hypercompetitive these days it’s much harder than it used to be. I’m not a believer in Kickstarter, either. If you can’t sell at least one or two investors on your idea, you’re probably not ready for prime time. www.bajansunonline.com/MAGAZINE/ | [email protected] | @BajanSunOnline