3 Characteristics of Successful CEOs (our clients with the best outcomes)

In Nashville, it’s back to school time. Parents are both sad (summer’s over) and jumping for joy, as they re-enter their routines, allowing for a little more time and grown-up freedom. In September, Ellevated Outcomes will be going back to school too; and therefore, this month, I’d offer a warm-up of sorts. Ways to organize and prepare yourself for a fresh start this fall.

As we’ve been hard at work planning our client appreciation event, the team has been reflecting on client needs, gaps, and our macro-level observations of small businesses.

This week, our team did a deep debrief on clients who have wild success in our work. And those who don’t. Part of our client experience process is that Tammy, our Outcomes Champion, interviews each client once per year, for us to collect feedback on where we’re doing really well and should double-down, along with where we need to improve.

When we collated 5 years of our clients’ numbers, direct feedback, and strategist reflection, I’d summarize 3 characteristics of successful CEOs in one sentence:

Clients who have enormous Ellevated Outcomes integrate with our work.

Integration is different from: completing assignments to check them off the list and move onto the next. If you have no idea what I mean (many people are box-checkers without realizing it), I wanted to detail what it looks and feels like, to truly integrate.

These are the 3 characteristics of successful CEOs, we’ve found. And here’s what’s important to note. They’re not adjective-characteristics. These are active practices of our clients who get the best outcomes.

1. You’re hungry. You have a clear vision, and you’re willing to get uncomfortable to obtain it.

This isn’t to say that you have to come to us, having your vision and goals totally crystallized. Most don’t. Part of our job in meeting #1 is to ask a lot of questions to extract your vision and goals in a clear, concise, precise way. Most people don’t know exactly what they do want – or better said – what’s even possible for them. But they know what they don’t want. That’s even more powerful.

But when someone works with us, we confront with you: prioritizing and making tradeoffs. If you’re not hungry enough to rally for the thing you want and wade into new waters to get it, you won’t make the tradeoffs. You’re going to have to do something new… different… scary. You understand: you’re going to have to earn this new level. Just because you’ve built it, doesn’t mean they’ll come. You have to have vision, hunger, and faith to step into this unknown with us.

2. You apply & practice rigorously. Then, you ask questions about the specifics.

Our work is the opposite of checking boxes or flatly completing work for the sake of work, then waiting for changes to happen. Our learning process (and any learning process for that matter) is: learn, apply, ask questions about the application. Then do it again… and again. This is the #1 difference between clients who get incredible results and those who don’t. And by the way, I’d go so far as to say this is true for life. You must practice, apply and then ask questions to go deeper.

And speaking of application and questions, the best clients take a first stab at finding solutions to problems or vetting opportunities. We are on call for our clients between meetings and never want them hesitating to ask for help in the in-between. The in-between, in fact, is where the most important work gets done (after all, it’s where the application happens).

Client with the best results don’t call to ask, “What do I do?” Instead, they propose a solution to the problem or form a point of view. Then, they ask questions like:

• What am I not seeing?
• I’m stuck in the micro. Can you remind me of the macro?
• Can you poke holes in this?

One time, a client said to me:

If I need someone to tell me I’m great, I’ll call my mom.

I pay you to show me my blind spots.

Another specific on this topic is that our best clients are active in our client ecosystem. Because our client selection is so, um… specific : ) it’s one of the highest pieces of value we offer, and it saddens me when people don’t use it to their advantage.

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve tried to get a point across to a client, and then a fellow client in the ecosystem says it to them; and eureka! It’s one of those funny and endearing things where as a strategist, you want to knock your head against the wall and are equally delighted. These occurrences always make me laugh (and clients so sweetly will circle back to say, “I know you’ve been trying to tell me this…”) But of course: I want people to learn and get the benefit, no matter the source. If that goal is achieved, I’m thrilled.

3. You have endurance.

I’m not shy about this point: our work is far from a silver bullet. In fact, sometimes I’m even a little self-conscious about how basic it is. While I’m proud of the sophistication of our work, its elegance comes from simplicity. This point can be confusing to some. They think, “It must be harder… Wait, there’s a shiny object over here… But everyone’s doing that thing.” In fact, most of the time the solution is to do the simple thing, over and over again.

The most advanced thing you can do is the basics, consistently.

Ramit Sethi

These 3 characteristics of successful CEOs (our clients) ladder up to resilience. Resilience builds your vitality. Your business’s sustainability. These practices push you into discomfort and productive failure. But these are the steps to literally create new pathways in your brain. And when you create new pathways in your brain, you create new pathways to your business’s best and brilliant future.