What does it take to run a $100m company? (5)
I am wondering how the big players scale their operations.
I am at a point where there is so much opportunity for me and my business, but so little time. I'm not a technical person. Who do I hire? What positions do I fill? It would be interesting to have some insight into how the big direct response internet companies are being run. I've gone through a lot of courses but I never hear anything about that. It's always about the lower level stuff, or the detailed technical stuff.
Delegation and trust. Identify a few core managerial roles and slowly find people you can trust who are suited to fit into them. Poach them from other companies, do heavy research, they won't all come at once. It's important to allow the employee's at the top grow as the company grows.
I'd recommend having a consultation with a few guys on odesk who come from similar backgrounds, get on calls with them for a few hours and pick their brains.
What roles are you looking for? CEO, COO, CFO, CMO, CIO?
Originally Posted by bobliu
I think I'm starting to get a better grip of it.
Depends on the type of business. For sales focused or B2B, you need a strong business-type partner that can lead a sales/BD team.
CFO/CMO/CIO etc these can be outsourced. Tech company, you need to be technical or have a CTO that you trust to know his shit.
For brick and mortar, that's easy.
If all you do is media buying as an affiliate, then you lead a team of junior media buyers, and the one that shows most leadership gets promoted after a year and manage the team while you build another team. A team should be able to share a pizza so keep it about 5-7 IMHO.
As you grow, you'll have more team leads, and you need a COO to manage the team leads that manage 5-7 media buyers each.
This is a pretty good lean structure IMO.
I have a few friends who run 9figure companies. This is what ive seen:
- delegation/trust, like what @bobliu said. Having upper mgmt that is self driven, doesnt need to be babied, and can make predictions is important
- innovative marketing that is a step or 2 ahead of the competition. My one friends company does 100mm+year bc he created an affiliate program in an industry where no other business had an affiliate program. My other buddy built his company by having an affiliate program, but systematically buying out his top affiliates, and moving them inhouse to their offices in europe.
- incredible drive/work ethic: these guys i know are all ridiculously driven individuals, with unshakeable confidence
- systems thinking: they dont concern themselves with the details. If they want to create a new division of their company, theyd rather buy a company out rather than create it from scratch.
- a assumption of failure as part of life: they arent perfectionists, they assume some employees arent going to work out, or some mktg/etc wont work out, or will fail eventually, and account for that in their business accordingly. Everythings basically replaceable, and they are unattached to the outcome.
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